Video Transcript for DIY Install: etrailer Hard Tonneau Cover on your 2022 Ford Ranger

Howdy there, neighbors, Ian with etrailer here. Today we're gonna be taking a look at the etrailer quad fold hard tonneau cover on our 2022 Ford Ranger. Let's get into a couple features and then that install. Now I've put a lot of these etrailer tonneau covers on, both the soft top and the hard top. We actually tested the soft top on this earlier. But I will say the hard top, regardless of what we put it on, has looked great, and no exception here with the Ranger, absolutely visually appealing, just nice clean look.

Yes, it does stick up a little bit above the bed rails, but for the visual appeal of it, I think that is manageable, especially for the price. If you're looking at higher end tonneau covers that do the exact same thing that this one does, you're really not getting the bang for the buck when it comes down to it. And this etrailer one, for the price point and the visual appeal, absolutely wonderful option. And then operation of the cover is gonna be as simple as just reaching underneath here. There's gonna be a couple squeeze tabs.

Does have them on both sides, so regardless of whether you're parked up against a wall, too close on the driver's side or maybe on the passenger, and you wanted to get something out, you still have the option to go to either side and get that flipped up. But they'll just go up one by one. Each panel is going to have its own set of releases. And then with this last one, we're just gonna flip that up. And I will say it's not necessarily too heavy, especially with as short as this bed is.

When you get into the bigger beds, the quad folds do get a little bit clunky, and heavy, and awkward. But this on the Ranger, it's not terrible at all, and I think anybody could manage with it. We do have other hard top options that roll up and give you full access to the bed, whereas you can see this one's gonna take about a foot of space out of the already very short bed. So there are benefits and drawbacks of whether you want the fold-up type or you're okay with this. It is removable, there's no drilling or tapping, so very easy to take out if we wanted the full access to the bed.

And with it in the fully folded position, they do give us these nice little push clasps that are gonna hold that in place while we're headed down the road. That way if it is folded up, we don't necessarily have the situation where it could flop over onto everything back there, or even become damaged or damage anything in the bed. I will say we did some road testing, just to see if there was any vibration or movement. We didn't see any at all, so very, very sturdy construction, especially once it's in there. Lots of tie down points for the rails for it to be good and sturdy. You don't have to worry about it shifting while you're headed down even in the highway speeds. We tested the same situation with the soft tonneau cover, didn't have any noise or vibration out of those. So again, both of those etrailer options, regardless of whether the hard or the soft, did really, really well for our road noise and vibration tests. And closing operation's as easy as just unclasping both of the little push tabs here. Give those a good squeeze and those release. And then they even have a spot for you to be able to stick 'em away once you've got that unclasped. And we can unfold each section. And they just drop and lock into place so that way each of them is where it should be. And then there is a rubber seal that's gonna sit up against the tailgate, so we'll close that last, and that'll complete the closing procedure. And as far as the install for this one, I wouldn't say it's all that hard. There's no drilling or tapping, like I had mentioned. There's no modifications to the bed, just the clamp rails, and then we'll set the cover on top. I would imagine anybody could get that done in probably 20, 30 minutes at most. But if it's not something you want to try to tackle, just go ahead and use that dealer locator we've got on the website. That'll help get you a trained professional to install that for you. But if you'd like to do it, I'll walk you through that process now. Beginning our installation, we'll need to install these rails here. So they do have a identifier as far as left and right, left being our driver's side, right being that passenger side. But there also is a eyelet set. Normally this isn't in there, but this first eyelet set's already installed at the front of the rail. So you'll put this at the front of the bed. Then what we're gonna want to do, with this pressed up against the bed rail, we are going to make sure that's as much at a 90 as we can. And we'll be installing three of these clamps on each side, six in total. And you'll wanna have one at the end, towards the rear of the vehicle, one at the front, here at the bed, and then one in the center. You'll just have to watch for any obstructions underneath, like little tabs that may be to hold the bed rail covers on here. And they will slide into the tracking. You wanna make sure that this angle is facing the outside of the bed, and then we're gonna use this lip here with the grooves against the inside of your bed rail. And you'll feed the bolt through, and then use the provided Allen key to get that snugged up. And then with that firmly tightened down here, we are going to add the bottom twist handle, which is gonna apply some upward force on that bed rail, helping keep that at that nice 90 degrees we're looking for. Then we're gonna take this eyelet that is provided with the kit, and we'll want to have the 90 degree facing downward here at the edge. We want this up at the top so that way when we slide this into the rail, it'll be up towards the cover. Then we'll bring the cover up, and just kind of get that set in place and try to get our left to right. The studs are going to be tucked up in the cover, so we'll have to get those out as well. And they are on a track system so we've got plenty of play to be able to adjust those as needed. And then if you're just doing this with one person, it's a lot easier just to have it on the bed rails and then try to lay those studs as close to the rear eyelets as you can. And then we'll come underneath and lift it up one side at a time. And we're gonna be adding these spacers in between the cover and that front eyelet here. So I'm gonna lift that up and then that will thread down through the eyelet. And just to make sure, before we put any hardware on these studs, we do want to push this rubber seal up here in between the cab and the bed of the truck. We'll just follow that all the way down, giving it a little pressure to get it into place. Then we're going to come back to the studs. We'll be starting with our spin nut here that's just a handled nut, and that will thread right onto that. We are gonna leave these just kind of loose for now. We want to get our final adjustments out of the way before we tighten all that down. But we will go ahead and throw on the wing nut next that comes with that, just a little plastic wing nut. And last but not least, we've got a small plastic cap protector that's going to keep anything from being punctured here in the bed by those studs sticking out. So we'll just kind of apply that. And next we're going to come to these eyelets that we inserted earlier. They will be taking the last of the handle bolts that we have, and we will need to set the set screw that is on the bottom here, again, with the provided Allen key. There's a set of three Allen keys that'll come with this, and the smallest one is gonna be the one for this. So we'll just get that tightened down and lined up with the hole above that's in the cover. And with that set screw in place, we'll go ahead and add our handled bolt here. And then we're gonna unfold just by unclipping both sides here. You can even use that as a handle to help get that started. We're just gonna work our way down, making sure that's latching the way it was intended to. And then we will have the tailgate open for the first one, just to kinda help get that seal that's back there into place. And we can see here, both sides have latched properly, so no issue there. And we'll give this a good close just to make sure that that seal back behind the tailgate does work as intended. And with that, good to go. I wanted to mention, if you do have right or left adjustments, or even forward or back, how to do so, pretty simple with this one. We're just gonna fold right back up and come to the two eyelets, the one in the front and the one in the rear on both sides. We would loosen these up and that will allow either our left or right movement or back or forward. The one in the back is gonna be more of that back to forward movement, and the one up here is more of your left or right, so worth mentioning. And that's gonna do it for our look at an installation of the etrailer quad fold hard tonneau cover on our 2022 Ford Ranger. My name's Ian with etrailer, appreciate you watching.