Video Transcript for Setting up the Leer Soft Tonneau Cover on your 2023 Chevrolet Silverado 2500

Hey, it's Ethan here at etrailer. Today we're gonna be taking a look at and showing you how to install this Leer soft roll up tonneau cover on our 2023 Chevrolet Silverado 2500. Might be a good option for you if you're looking for a good way to protect some of the items in your truck bed, maybe from the elements, or maybe from just somebody breaching in and taking them. Also way a good way to get you a little bit more fuel economy on some longer trips. So let's check out how it works. The cover is made of a double coated reinforced vinyl as well as aluminum bars that go across, and it's got this nice matte black finish.

So the vinyl is gonna do well to hold up against UV rays and weather, and the aluminum bars are gonna do a good job of helping keep that tension built-in. So as you can see, even if you push down a little bit, you have plenty of tension. So if you get some water on there that puddles up, it's not gonna make the whole thing flex in on itself, and the matte black is gonna do a good job of keeping some of those reflections away from making so that there's a pretty bad glare while you're driving. Let's get the tailgate open and see how we can go about actually rolling the cover up. So with the tailgate open, on either side, you can see that there are these two clamps that you can press in towards each each other.

So if you open one side, it'll open both of them, which is a nice system, and then we can go ahead and start to roll this up. We're gonna do our best to keep everything centered so we're not getting too much difficulty lining things up the next time we roll it down. You might find it a little bit easier to keep things even if you actually get up and roll it from the center. You might notice when I was trying to do it from one side the other side started to be away from me a little bit and become a little bit uneven. So in an effort to avoid that, we just rolled up from the middle and now that we're at the end we can lock it into place with these buckles and just put 'em into the clasp on the other side to secure cover in this position.

Have to loosen this one up just a little bit, once we get it into place, we can tighten it back down. With it rolled up is one of the bigger benefits to using a soft tonneau cover because you do have full access to your truck bed now, but it still doesn't block a ton out of your window in the back compared to some folding covers that won't actually go up all the way. You'll have two thirds access or if they do fold up all the way, they'll block the rear view window. Also, if you have a hard tonneau cover you're gonna have a canister that sits here that's gonna take up some bedroom. So again, that's one of the perks of using a soft cover.

To get the cover rolled back down, same process just in reverse. Start by loosening up those latches there and doing our best again to keep things centered and even as we roll it back down trying to make sure that hook and loop on either side is lining up. Once we get to the end here and see that there's this angled portion that's gonna fit right into this channel on either side and then the cover snaps back down into place and you get that tension. Once you have the cover back down, you're probably gonna wanna make sure that the hook and loop is on evenly on both sides so you can just run your hand up and down, making sure that it's secure, but the ease of use isn't too bad, it gets a little bit clunky trying to keep everything even. And the installation itself was a little bit tricky to have the rails held up while I was also getting the clamps on the other side. You can check out how I did it though. For the install, the first thing that you would do is pull this plastic backing off the adhesive bulkhead weather strip, roll it out and place it on your bulkhead to try to limit some of the water getting in to your tonneau cover. But because this is just for demonstration purposes, we're not gonna do it. This will be your first step. Your next step will be getting the rail system set up. So you're gonna wanna make sure that this latch side is facing the end and the side with this opening here is facing the front of your vehicle. Then might be a little bit difficult to do with one person but we're gonna try to set it up in a way that shows you how it's possible. Each rail will have three of these clamps. Using the provided Allen tool, we're going to loosen up this bolt so that it allows us to open these clamps up enough. We want them to be as wide as you can while still keeping the bolt threaded. And then you'll come down to the rail here and you'll slide them through just feeding the top of the clamp into the track. You have to come in at a pretty specific angle, slide the clamps into the track. And then we'll repeat the process for the other two. Once you have all three clamps on, you're going to want one of the clamps about as far back as you can get it, one of them about as far as the front as you can get it and one of 'em in the middle. We should be able to get it to the point where we can come up. Once we have all three of our clamps underneath in place, we can tighten them down with the same Allen tool. Going to start with the sides first just to make sure that those are snug. So that'll hold the middle one in place and then we can finish up there before we come back and put the bolts in the bottom. We want to make sure that this hook and loop is up to the point where we're actually going to be able to roll the cover up down. We wanna make sure that it's flush with our bed here. Can definitely say that doing it by myself getting the clamps on and underneath while keeping this up was definitely a challenge. It is doable, but if you have somebody else to help you out and hold the rails up while you're doing it, it's gonna make life a lot easier. Now we'll come in with these bolts on the bottom just as our secondary point security. Just hand thread them as much as I can until they make contact with the bottom clamp and then using the same Allen tools I used before, tighten it down. As you can see, the clamp itself is shifting a little bit so the rail probably moved a little bit and I can come back and make sure this top one is tight also. Now we'll repeat the process for the same or for the next two clamps in the same way. You also have the option to when you're sliding these clamps in in the first place to put these bolts just barely threaded into the bottom plate but I found kind of just gets in the way. So that's up to preference really at that point. After we get the rails on the front and the passenger side our next step is to take the cover and set it down on the bulkhead, doing our best to center it up before we fit it in with the leftover bolts and our next step. Now we'll use this bolt, fit it in at an angle and then we slide it over into this channel here and we'll repeat the same thing on the other side. Now we'll fit the bolts into that opening, trying to make sure that it's lined up on both sides, just like that. You see it going in there and then we'll move over to the other side and make sure that that one is good as well. Now that both bolts on either side are in place we'll do the best that we can to pull this weather strip back out to try to get that seal against any rain water. Now that we have both bolts in and the cover about centered up, we can replace these washers and this flower nut on the bolt, just feed up. And then we can replace flower nut as well. We'll probably notice that the bolt shakes back and forth a little bit just because the channel that the bolt is in is wider than the actual bolt itself which allows us to slide it up and back a little bit. Depending on if our cover fits securely from this point or not, we can fold it down as part of the next step after we replace all these parts and see if it is in the right spot for us or if we have to come back and adjust it. We'll unroll our cover by undoing these buckles here on the back end and just taking it down somewhat slowly just to try to make sure that it stays centered. Once we get to the end, we can see if we have enough room here by fitting this angled in into the channel on either side, so it looks like we should be okay. Just fit it in on both ends and secure it down. Once we have it tensioned down, we can walk back on both sides and fit the hook and loop into the sides just making sure that everything is nice and flush. Once we fastened everything in place, we can shut our tailgate making sure we have enough room there and that's it for the installation. Overall, like I mentioned, a soft tonneau cover like this might be a good option for you. You don't want something that's crazy invasive taking up truck bed space but you still want the benefits of a tonneau cover like that security for your items inside. This might be a really good option. Maybe if ease of installation is something that's important to you, you might wanna check out one of the fold up options. I found personally that those are just a little bit easier to get on and use afterwards, but again, you're probably gonna sacrifice some of that trunk space or if security is super important to you, maybe check out one of the hard tonneau covers that rolls up into the canister. Again, gonna take some bed space but it is gonna give you extra security. Overall, this was just a look at how the Leer soft roll up tonneau cover fits on our 2023 Chevrolet Silverado 2500.