Video Transcript for How to Set Up Your Lomax Hard Tonneau Cover - 2024 Ford F-150

Hey everyone, I'm Evangeline right here at etrailer. Today we have the Lomax Folding Tonneau Cover and we're gonna take a look at how it fits right here on our 2024 Ford F-150. If you're looking for a very low profile, (hand thudding) heavy duty, but also pretty thin tonneau cover, this is gonna be a great option for you. It is gonna be a trifold cover, which means that it's really easy to set up. It's really easy to unfold and to bring back down. So when you want pretty much maximum security with minimal effort, this might be something that you're interested in.

For minimal effort, here's what that looks like. Bring your tailgate down, because that's how you secure and lock your tonneau cover. When your truck's locked, so is your cover. You pull one of these latches on the side and then you just bring the fold over. Now this does have a little bit of heft to it, compared to your more canvas style covers, but all in all, when you compare this to other folding covers, it actually is on the thinner and lighter side, which is a good thing and I'll go through that later.

But moving on to our trifold function, bringing this on over here. This is actually a position that you can lock your tonneau cover and if you did need to load other items in, you could pull this other latch and continue lifting up. You also have safety features and safety straps on the side, just to make sure that when you are driving around, it is in its most secure position. You still have some access to your truck bed, but you still have your kind of cover on there too. The Lomax really is low profile.

With it folded up like this, it doesn't take up much room above our truck bed. In fact, on our F-150, the top of the tonneau cover is about right where the top of those seats are, so you don't really get any reduced visibility with it folded up. Unfortunately, you do get reduced truck bed space and that is something that's solved with the Lomax Stance, which is a different version of this tonneau cover, and it has spots where you can secure the top of the tonneau cover, folded up to your top of your cab. A lot more installation involved with that, though, so just something worth considering if you really want that feature in full bed access. Bringing this down, you can also see a comparison of the materials used with this tonneau cover.

Up top, you have that really nice black finish. Underneath, you really see the aluminum construction of this cover. All of that works together so you have a lot of support for the cover. This can actually hold up to 400 pounds of weight and then with that thinner style, where here in Missouri we actually have some people that have this tonneau cover on their trucks and they've experienced a lot of good experiences with hail, with this style of tonneau cover. That thinner but durable construction means it holds up to hail even better than some of the thicker types of covers. But that's just more of a personal experience of some of my coworkers with this cover. For me personally, my favorite part is just how easy it is to set all up on the truck. And those are the main features of the Lomax Folding Tonneau Cover. If you want specific details and specs and maybe other things that weren't hit in this video, chances are you can find them right here on our product page. We have all that information there for you. And if you have specific questions of maybe how this might work with your truck or if we have any opinions on what might be the better fit for your different adventures, feel free to reach out to us right here at e-trailer. In fact, you can even leave a comment right here on this video about your experience with your tonneau cover. That's how we heard about how people like how it performs in storms and some different interesting scenarios, where the thinness of this board design was really helpful for them. So if you have stories like those, we'd love to hear them. But if you're curious about how I got this on our F-150, well, let's go take a look at the install. The install process is very straightforward, but we're gonna guide you through that in this video. Now there's some fun tips and tricks that I have from installing a bunch of different tonneau covers and focusing here on our F-150, there is a special note there for if you have an electric tailgate, things like that. So those are all things that you might wanna know before tackling the install. Now for the tools, what I brought here today are some scissors, a wrench. We have a half-inch socket, as well as a seven-16th socket. And I do recommend picking up a torque tool, just to make sure everything is properly tightened down. Once you have those tools, let's get started. We're gonna start by attaching our side rail pieces. So you're going to have a short rail and then a long rail. On the short rail, there's gonna be a carriage bolt and nut. Use your seven-16th wrench to remove that, and then you can slide your rails into each other. So line this up. And here, that looks really good. This is all lined up. If you get confused on which piece goes to which, once you slide 'em through, you'll figure it out. And then you can secure both pieces with the carriage bolt on the nut that you had previously removed, and then use your seven-16th wrench to tighten that down. You're gonna just lift them up to the side of the bed, using that weather stripping that you're gonna feel push up against those rails and you're gonna push the rail as much towards the cab as possible, so make sure that's as far as you can get it and then you're going to clamp things down. Now this process is much easier with a second person holding it in place, but I usually find that I can just hold with one hand and secure with the other. Now look at your clamps and you have different options here, depending on how level your rails turn to be. So if you find there's a lot of gap between your rails and the new tonneau cover rail, you can always rotate the clamp ends to make up for that gap. You can also install this up and down on the rail if you find that your tonneau rails are tilted up or tilted down. So we're just gonna install one in place for now, just to hold things up. And then you're going to tighten down with a half-inch wrench. (wrench clicking) Get all four clamps tightened down on each side. So you'll want your front one as close to the cab as possible. Your second one as close to the splice as you can get on it, and then the third two-thirds down the truck bed. And finally, the last clamp as close to the end of the rail as you can get it. Once they're tightened down, go ahead and torque them down to the specs specified in your instructions. Now it's time to install the seal. There's gonna be an adhesive underneath that you're gonna use to stick into your truck bed. So you have some alcohol wipes included with your kit. This is what you can use to clean off your truck bed to make sure it seals properly. It also helps when it's a little bit warmer outside. If you have a spray in bedliner like what we have here, for some, depending on the texture, you may have to sand down that texture. Here, it's pretty smooth, like it's not too bumpy, so this should seal pretty well. Taking this off, we're going to make sure that the tall part of the seal faces the cab and the short part faces the end of the truck bed. And then we're gonna push this up against the truck bed as much as possible, making sure this fits against the rails as well. You can see how that creates a flush seal and then we're just gonna continue down. More often than not, once you get to the end, you're gonna find that you have some extra or excess of that seal, and that's great because that's what the scissors are gonna be for. So I'll go ahead and snip off that excess. I always like to mark where it fits and then cut it. Once that fits nicely in there, everything looks flush, then that's good. For our installation here, I grabbed Aiden to help out with just hoisting the cover up and onto the rails. So make sure you both know which side is the front and which side is the back. And there are gonna be latches that you're gonna need to lift into the rail. So line that up and you can see that latch and where it goes towards the truck bed. Push forwards towards the cab, making sure that our latch fits in at the end. And then you drop this down, and you're gonna see how it clicks into place. You can always pull our rope here if you needed to readjust. By the cab, there are these storage hooks, so to continue unfolding the tonneau cover, we're gonna remove both of those hooks by pushing down and then letting it jump right up. And now we can lift it up and over. As you are unfolding, make sure to attach these safety straps with their (indistinct) on both sides. Shut and secure. Your final check of if you installed everything right is to go ahead and close your tailgate. This looks really good here. We have a good seal all around where the seal is there, but we're not making impact with the tailgate. If you find that things don't look square or maybe there is a gap, now is the time to go ahead and just loosen the clamps along the rails, make those adjustments on the rails, usually. Troubleshooting is you need to move a bit closer to the cab, but this looks good all around. Everything works well, everything arrives pretensions. So if you needed to move this up and down, you can always just pull the latches. Check all the latches are good and that's gonna be it for your installation of your Lomax Tonneau Cover.