Video Transcript for Step-By-Step Installation Tutorial for the BAKFlip MX4 Hard Tonneau Cover on a 2012 Ford F-150

Speaker 1: Today on this 2012 Ford F-150 we'll be having a look at, and showing you how to install, the BAKFlip MX4 Hard Tonneau Cover, part number BAK48309. This tonneau cover, coupled with our locking tailgate, is a great way to secure any cargo in the bed of our truck, to prevent theft and tampering, as well as keeping it out of the elements. This cover has a nice matte black finish, which is resistant to scuffs, scratches, and the UV rays. It will also match any truck color nicely. Our 1/2" thick, rust proof aluminum panels are sturdy and durable, and they are rated to support up to 400 pounds of weight that is evenly distributed.Now, what's great about this cover is that we have a variety of ways that we can use it. We can have it fully closed, like it is now, to protect all of our cargo, or we can have it fully open, or partially open.

We'll demonstrate that now. We'll open our tailgate, we'll then pull down on our cable to release our latches, and fold it forward. We can then fold open the next section by pulling the cable again, folding it forward. We'll then take our buckle and secure it to our clasp, pull the strap tight. Do the same on the other side.

With our buckles in place we don't have to worry about our cover folding back in the wind. This will allow us to have access to our track bed to put a tall object in, but yet still have full visibility out of our back window.We also have the fully open position. We'll undo our next latch, rest it against our back window. We don't have to worry about causing any damage to the back window of our truck, or any painted surfaces, because we have these rubber pads that prevent any hard contact. We'll then unclip our lift support rod from our rails.

We'll then loosen our knob on our cover, slide the plastic lock up, place the lift support inside, push back down until the lift support rod goes in this notch, then we'll tighten the knob up. Once we have it done on one side we'll do the same for the other side. This will prevent our cover from blowing back in the wind as we're driving, securing it to our vehicle. This will give us full access to the bed of our truck, for any large objects that we may have, or if we need to tow a gooseneck or a 5th wheel trailer. And that's what sets this tonneau cover apart from others on the market, the ability to easily use it in multiple different positions.

Putting our tonneau cover back into the fully closed position is just as easy as putting it up in the fully upright position; you just repeat the same process.What's great about this tonneau cover is it sits flush with the bed side of our truck, giving us a nice clean look. We have seels around the perimeter of our tonneau cover; we have three here on the back, which seel on top of our tailgate, one that seels to our bed side, and then we have one near the cab of the truck to help prevent any moisture from getting inside, and protecting our cargo from the elements. Now, our tonneau cover only sticks up about 3/8" from the factory bed rails. The rails that attach our tonneau cover only stick out about 2 1/2" from the inside edge of our factory bed rails. What I really like about this tonneau cover is how well it contours to our truck. It's like the tonneau cover was on our track from the factory.Now that we've gone over some features, we'll show you how to get it installed. To begin our install we find ourselves in the bed of our truck, closest to our cab. Now, if our truck doesn't have a drop in plastic bed liner, like this one, we would need to install our weather stripping seel across the front of the bed of our truck so we wouldn't get any moisture inside of our bed if it we're to rain. But since ours has a drop-in plastic bed liner, we won't be needing the seel. Okay, now we're positioning our rails inside the bed of our truck. This silver tab here will face towards the front of the truck, and towards the center of the bed. And this ball stud faces towards the bottom of the bed of the truck. Once we do that for both of our rails we can determine the side that they go on. This will be our passenger side rail.Now we need to ensure that our tailgate is closed. Now we'll place our rails onto the side of our bed. Now that we have our rail resting on the bedside, we can position our front clamp between 6" and 9" away from the end of the rail. We'll make sure that the nut faces towards the center of the truck. We'll just finger tighten it for a little bit, and make sure that our front ridge is all the way on the rail for the tonneau cover. Apply downward pressure to our rail, and use a 9/16 socket to tighten it up. Now we'll place our second one near the middle section of our rail. Now we'll position our third and final clamp about 6" from the end of our tailgate. Now we will torque our hardware to the amount specified in the instructions. And we'll repeat the same process for the driver's side. And now we will clip our lift rod into place. The socket will press on the ball end, and we'll clip it into its holder.And now we'll place our folded up tonneau cover on our rails, making sure that our front section faces towards the front of the truck. And now we'll push it forward. Now we need to install our buckle catch. We'll install this by pushing up a threaded plug underneath our tonneau cover into these holes, place this over the hole, and we'll secure it with two screws. Once you have them both started we'll snug down our screws. We'll be sure to repeat the same process for the other side.We have our tonneau cover in position now, with the last section not folded up. This is the edge, when we have our tonneau cover fully folded up, that comes in contact with the back of the cap of our truck. We have three of these rubber bumpers to apply, one on each end and then one in the middle. These go on with double sided tape, so I'll peel off the backing and apply it, press down firmly, and this will prevent any damage to happening to our back window on the truck, or the painted surfaces.Now we'll take our flat bolt, one of our rubber washers, and we'll push it through the hole in the top of our tonneau cover, near the cab of our truck at each corner, through our rails. Do the same on both sides. Here's where our bolt comes through, underneath, to our rail bracket. We'll have a rubber washer again, flat washer, lock washer, and then our knob. Now, we'll snug the knob down by hand; we don't need to over tighten it, just make sure it's tight.Now we can start to close our cover and check for alignment, and make sure everything's square. We also wanna make sure that it latches into our side rails easily. Before we close the last section, if you have opened your tailgate, you'll wanna close the tailgate, so we wanna make sure that we always have the tailgate closed before we close the last section. Now, what we're looking for, to make sure that our tonneau cover is square, is that the back seel of it is even across our tailgate, and is resting on top of it. Ours is doing that, so we know we have it square on the bed of the truck. The next thing that we're looking for is to make sure that the tonneau cover is as far forward, or as far back, as it needs to be. So we'll peel back on our seel here, and make sure that we have a very small gap between our metal frame on our side rails and our tailgate, and make sure that's the same on both sides. Our is very good; it's very close, but it's not actually touching.Now we'll take our drain tube and we'll push it onto our fitting. And now the other end of our drain tube we need to pass through our bed liner. If you didn't have a plastic bed liner, there's a rubber grommet at the front of the bed of the truck where you could drill a hole through and pass this out, and it will then get all the water that's collected by our rails outside the bed of the truck. But because we have a plastic bed liner, we can just drill a hole in the bed liner and stick this into there, and it will then drain its way out through the bed of the truck that way. So I'll make a pilot hole right about here, and then I'll enlarge it with the step bit. Then I'll continue to enlarge it until it's the proper size. Then we can take our tube, stick it inside. We'll repeat the same process for the other drain hole.And that completes our look at, and installation of, the BAKFlip MX4 Hard Tonneau Cover, part number BAK48309, on this 2012 Ford F-150.