etrailer Hard Tonneau Cover - Folding - Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic

Video Transcript for etrailer Hard Tonneau Cover Installation - 2023 Ford F-150

Hi, Matt with etrailer, and today, we're talking about the etrailer hard quad fold up tonneau cover on the back of our 2023 Ford F-150. Now this is gonna be a great option for you if you're looking for something that's affordable. It's gonna help keep a lot of debris, snow, and water out of your bed, and it's gonna be something very secure. So let's check it out. With this being a hard-top tonneau cover, you'll notice (knocking) that feels pretty solid. No one's gonna be able to get into here like they would with a soft cover.

If they came over here with a knife, they won't be able to cut this open. It's also gonna help you save on gas because we're not gonna have that wind drag pushing against the back of our tailgate end of our vehicle. And like I said, with it being secure too, the only way to access this is to get underneath it. So if you have a locking tailgate, you won't be able to have anyone open this up. And finally, like I said earlier, with the elements building up on top of here, nothing's gonna be able to get in here like water.

If you have any luggage back here or if it snows, you won't have a bunch of snow pile up in the back of here that you have to clear out. To operate this system, we're gonna have to open up our tailgate like I was talking about, and you'll find two levers underneath here. It's gonna be on your driver or passenger side, so you have the option of opening up either one. If I squeeze those levers together, this is gonna fold in on itself. You also notice we do have these foam pads throughout.

That's for when it opens up and rests on itself, it doesn't scratch it up. We're also gonna have some additional levers throughout it. And what that's for is to help secure this down where no one can come in the center of it, try to pry it open. So it's gonna be a pretty secure system overall. Now this one is a little bit different than other styles.

We're gonna have other styles that use a canister style or a roll-up style, and what's different about those is the canister style is gonna take up some of your bed and retract into itself. This is actually gonna be more closely related to a roll-up style, which is gonna compact and take up some of the back window. Let's get those exact measurements of how much space it's gonna take up. So the first one I'm gonna get is the total distance from the back front bed near the bulkhead to the end of the tonneau cover, and that's gonna be about 17 1/2 inches, which isn't bad at all. If we go from the bed rail to about some of these bits that stick up here, like those levers, that's gonna be about 4 1/4 inches, so that's not gonna take up much space at all. Over by the cab side part of the tonneau cover, you'll notice we do have this buckle, and this is gonna be one of the only two positions you can have this in while you're driving because those other sections don't have any other point to secure the rest of the tonneau cover down. Just keep that in mind when you are driving with it. Also it will have this other location to store that buckle when you have this fully extended out. Have these weather seals that fit around our tonneau cover itself. You're gonna notice it's also on these little smaller sections right here. Also we're gonna have some additional weather seals that run down our rails. That's gonna help prevent a lot of water from entering your bed. With it fully extended, you've probably noticed that this does stick up a decent amount. It's actually gonna sit on top of our side rails. The exact measurement is gonna be about an inch. Something to think about when you are using this, this is gonna have a weight capacity to it, and it's gonna be 200 pounds. So that's gonna be a benefit of having a hard tonneau cover is you actually can use this as a workspace too. Now make sure when you are putting your tools or whatever you have on hand on here, make sure it's evenly dispersed because you don't wanna have 200 pounds in one spot because that could damage it or dent it. Overall, this is gonna be a great, budget-friendly option for you, especially if you're just looking for more security for your bed, whether it is from theft, for preventing anyone from getting in here, or if you're just trying to protect it from any weather conditions as well. As for the installation process, it's fairly straightforward. There are a few points that are a little bit finicky to deal with. You might have to tighten something down for a decent amount of time, but that's just because this is a budget-friendly option. But on the bright side to that, this isn't gonna require any modifications to your vehicle. There won't be any drilling involved. It's gonna be pretty straightforward. But if you wanna see how we did it, just stay tuned, and we'll walk you through the process. To start off our installation, we're gonna start installing our rails. And then make sure you have the correct one in the right orientation. We wanna make sure the one that says left is gonna be on our driver's side. And that label that says left is on the tailgate's end. And then the end with this bracket or block is gonna be on the cab side. The way this should fit on here is with this weather strip facing towards your bed rails, and it's gonna sit in place just like this. Now to really attach this and hold it in place, we're gonna have to put some clamps on. You're gonna have three per side. And this is gonna be the assembly for it. You're gonna have two halves that are separate. The way they're gonna work is the side with this longer channel on it is gonna have a bolt that goes through, enters, and threads into the other side. You also wanna make sure this bottom has this hole that's open 'cause what we're gonna do there is then thread this hand knob through the bottom of there. Now what's not a bad idea now to do is to thread these in before we put these clamps on 'cause this is gonna be a little bit easier to work with, and if these threads are dirty, we can help clean them out now. I like to push this all the way until that block at the very end is making contact with our bulkhead. Now we're gonna come over here to our tailgate end. We'll find this opening right here. What I'm gonna do is I already have the clamp put together like I showed you just a few moments ago, and I'm just gonna slide this through this channel. You might have to wiggle it a little bit so it really gets on there 'cause there might be some items underneath here or some stuff just in the way, but stopping right here is pretty good. Then I'm gonna take our included Allen key and just tighten this down just a bit more, not enough where there's gonna be a lot of pressure, just enough to hold everything in place. Once you have all of these on, you just repeat that process on the other side. And from this point, we're gonna tighten everything the rest of the way down. Now you'll notice the way I do have this spread out. That's just to apply even pressure throughout. The first thing I'm gonna do when I tighten these down is tighten that hand knob so it's applying pressure all the way down from underneath, making sure our rails are gonna be level all the way across. Once this is tightened all the way from the bottom, then we can start tightening it from the side. And you just wanna do this 'till about you have a fair amount of resistance but nothing too crazy. And you just keep doing that all the way down until both sides are tightened. When you have everything tightened down, something I would like to point out is the placement of our clamps. The reason why I have them in these placements is so we have even pressure all the way across. So you want one clamp closest to your bulkhead side, one on your tailgate side, so both sides are secured at their furthest points. And then we want one close to the center, so it's even throughout. Now there isn't any set points where you have to have the clamps, just anywhere you can get them to fit on and provide you even pressure. But now we're gonna start installing the mountain blocks. The way this is gonna go on isn't like this, even though this is gonna match the level of this other mountain block. We actually wanna flip it around so that bolt under here is underneath this flat area. After, when you've done that, we're gonna stick this into this channel and push forward on it towards our tailgate just slightly. Just lift this up. And the way we wanna do this is you're gonna have the side with the weather strip. We wanna make sure that is the side closest to the bulkhead. And our aim right now is to get this as close to the cab as we can and make sure everything's even, but you can make your adjustments after. We also wanna watch out for our side-to-side positioning. So right now we're a little bit off, but if we just move this over a little bit, we can really feel this grab into place. We also wanna make sure we have the end of our tonneau cover in line with the end of our bulkhead. So I can probably push this a little bit more, right about there. We don't wanna make contact with our back window. But now I wanna test the fit of tonneau cover. So I'm gonna undo that strap there and fold this out. We're just gonna be slowly doing this 'till this is completely out. And once we have it fully extended, we can check to make sure everything closes and our tailgate will shut. (tailgate slamming) In some cases, you'll get a fit like this. So there's a little bit of a gap right here. That's because we do have where it clamps into place right over here, this latch. So what we're gonna have to do is probably just move this a little bit. It's probably just slightly skewed, so I've just gotta pull on it since nothing's really cinched down yet. Really push down on it and make sure everything sits flush. We can come over to the bulkhead side of our bed, and we're gonna lift up on this tonneau cover. We'll have this T bolt right here. It's in the shape of a T. And what we're trying to do is line up that bolt with this mountain bracket right here. But in between that, we wanna put a spacer. And the spacer we're gonna have is this right here. So what I'm gonna do is put that on now. And with that on, I'm just gonna lift this tonneau cover back in and line up that bolt with that mountain block. So what we actually had to do was climb underneath the tonneau cover and line up both at the same time, because if you try to do one at a time, those spacers can just fall right off. And it's gonna be a lot easier to see everything lined up from underneath. So it is gonna be kind of an awkward fit, but if you just bear with it, you should be just fine. But at this point, we're gonna open up this tonneau cover the rest of the way. So I'm just gonna fold it in on itself. Right now it's locked into place. So what I gotta do is just press those two tabs at the bottom and open it right up. You have to do that again too until it's all the way in on itself, and we can start putting in the hardware to finalize keeping those bolts in place. Put on this handle or this knob, and you'll just bolt this into place. I will say this is a longer bolt, so this is probably gonna take a minute or so. They can be a little noisy too because each one of those knobs will make contact with your vehicle depending if you do have a liner or not. (knob knocking) Once this feels pretty tight, we can grab our wing nut and do the same thing, coming from the bottom and threading this on. Now be careful that you don't tear through these threads incorrectly 'cause this is made of a more softer material. So definitely watch out for that. Once this starts to feel pretty snug too, we'll finish it off with this plastic cap and push it on the bottom. We're gonna come to the mountain block in front of that and line it up with this bracket we have at the bottom of our tonneau cover. What I like to do is see if that's gonna fit in, and if it does, I'm gonna just take this off, and then grab our smallest Allen key. You're gonna find this set screw at the very bottom of here, and that's what we want to tighten up. Now we'll say this does come pretty loose, so this might take a minute. We'll keep tightening it. You eventually get to a point where it's almost tight, and I recommend is double checking to see if this is moved because it's probably gonna move a little bit as you tighten this up. And just make sure you realign everything that you have. I can finally do the last touches. And once it's on there, I can bolt this into place to our bracket. And once you've done this on one side, you're gonna repeat that same process on the other. Gonna be doing a fitment test. Make sure nothing slid over, everything's working fine, everything's clicking back into place, (tonneau cover slamming) it's shutting correctly, and (tonneau cover slamming) we can still shut our tailgate. (tailgate slamming) And if it shuts, I just recommend just walking all the way around, making sure everything is sealed up properly. And that'll do it for our look at the installation and some of the features of our etrailer hard tonneau cover on the back of our 2023 Ford F-150. Thanks for watching.