Video Transcript for Setting Up Your etrailer Soft Tonneau Cover - 2017 Ford F-250 Super Duty

Hi Matt with etrailer. If you have a 2017 Ford F-250 Super Duty and you're looking for something that's just gonna keep prying eyes from looking in the bed of your truck or you're just looking for some extra protection from the elements, then the etrailer Soft Roll-Up Tonneau Cover is gonna be a great way to do that at an affordable rate, so let's check it out. Now we have plenty of different styles of tonneau covers on our website. There're gonna be two big differences between them. And the first is gonna be soft roll-up, just like the one we have today. And then we're gonna have hard tonneau covers.

Really a hard tonneau cover is just gonna give you more security so no one can access the bed of your truck. It's gonna be important if you have anything really precious or expensive, like some really expensive tools that you want to keep away from anyone taking. Now a soft roll-up one is great for if you're just trying to keep out any of the elements. It's also great for just basic protection from anyone taking your items because it's just gonna keep things out of sight and outta mind. Now three things I like about this one in particular is that one, it's gonna be a very adaptable.

It's gonna be very easy to maneuver taking on and off and it's just gonna be really easy to use too. To show you what I really mean is I'll just open up my bed (tailgate clatters) and we're gonna have two straps. You can pick either one you want, to release this, (mechanism clicks) you'll hear that click into place and all I'm doing from this point is just unraveling the tonneau cover. And there's gonna be a lot of different options for how tonneau covers really roll-up or fold into themselves. (cover rips) Like I said, this is gonna be a roll-up one, (cover rips) but we also have the hard folding options.

(cover rips) And the folding option is pretty good, (cover rips) especially when you find the ones that fold up all the way against your cab. But those are gonna block the back window, so that is the downside of that. And then the downside of the ones that don't block the back of your cab is they're gonna take up a lot more of your bed space. Another tonneau cover that's gonna take up a lot more of your bed space is gonna be a canister style, which is really easy to use. But what I like about the soft roll-up ones are they barely take up any space at all.

Really this isn't blocking too much of your back window or your bed. To really show you what I mean, I get a few measurements. So the first one I'm gonna get is gonna be the height of how high this sits up and that's gonna be about five inches, which is really low profile. (tape measure snaps) You're probably not even gonna notice it in your back window because this is gonna sit below your headrest. The second measurement I'm gonna get is going to be how far it sticks out. That's gonna be about four inches at most. So very compact, not gonna take up really any space in your bed, especially with this being almost seven feet long. So you have a lot of room to play with back here. Now if you're ever in a situation where you really need every inch of your bed or maybe you're going through a car wash, you actually can remove the tonneau cover itself. I've done it before. All you have to do is lift up on it a bit. You're gonna find that you have that bolt. Once you loosen up this bolt on both ends, you can actually slide this out. This is a little bit of a tight fit but still super easy process. Only two bolts to remove. And always remember you're gonna have these buckles that's recommended to put on or strap down when you are driving around. (buckle clicks) This is also gonna make things more compact so you can cinch it down and make sure you have a really snug fit. And speaking about how things are gonna install. Now I know I said that tonneau cover is gonna use an Allen key, but that's really the only point you will need a tool to install this tonneau cover, 'cause everything else is gonna be tool free and you won't have to make any modifications to your vehicle. And that's thanks to this simple design to these clamps right here. These clamps are really just gonna be two parts. One part's gonna be grabbing onto that tonneau cover rail and the second part's gonna be grabbing onto that bed rail and that's just gonna be cinched into place with this hand knob. So you just have to hand tighten this down. So I definitely like that, and we do have enough of them to really fully tighten this to give this a snug fit. And talking about snug fits, we're also gonna have this tensioner at the very end of our tonneau cover. I'm a big fan of this 'cause it's really easy to use. All you have to do to really adjust this if you need to, is loosen up these two bolts and slide it around. Now straight outta the box, typically this is gonna be the perfect setting for you, just leaving it on that first setting and it'll tighten down to where you need. Now if you do need to tighten it down a little bit more, just adjust it to fit your needs. And if we actually focus on where the end of this tonneau cover rail is, you'll notice we are blocking our stake pocket. So that's one of the downsides to this style. It's nice that this isn't taking up any of our bed space, but we are losing those areas on top of our bed rail. And something else to really check out with these rails are gonna be how high they stick up from your bed rails. And really that's just gonna be a little bit over an inch. Now when you have the tonneau cover on here, that's probably gonna be seeing slightly under an inch and a half, so that's still pretty low profile, not as low profile as some other options (tape measure snaps) that actually sit in your bed and are actually the height of your bed. Now one of the downsides to that though is anything that sits in your bed is going to take up more of your bed space. So really we're getting a lot out of this tonneau cover. To really show you though what I'm talking about, I'll just cinch this down and we can take a closer look at how this tensioner's gonna work. We're gonna have this hook right here or this knob. This knob is gonna press in (knob clicks) to that divot or where that tensioner is. (mechanism clicks) We make sure both ends are like that, apply tension (mechanism clicks) (mechanism clatters) and we'll click into place. And now, if I get that measurement to see how much space we have underneath our tonneau cover, we're gonna have just about 21 and a half inches. (tape measure slides) So you will be able to put a lot in here. Now if you do have any type of fifth wheel in the back of your bed, most of the time that will work. You just need to check the height of that fifth wheel before putting this on. This will also be very water resistant. Now really no tonneau cover is really ever fully waterproof, but it's just gonna be all varying degrees of water resistant. And what's gonna help us out with that, is gonna be these weather strips built in to our tonneau cover. So you're gonna have one on your tailgate side and it's just gonna fold it up and press against that tailgate when you shut it. I'll show you that in a second. But before I do that, I just wanna point out this corner. Now this corner on your bed is always gonna be a potential leak point. That's pretty common with most tonneau covers. Definitely keep that in mind but not much is gonna be able to get through just from that one point. And as you can see, (tailgate slams) this does a really good job. It might be kind of hard to see in that little crack there, but that weather strip is really being crushed up against. Another great point for where this is gonna keep water out is gonna be the sides. That corner is popping up a little bit, but on the bed rail itself or the tonneau cover rail, it's gonna have this foam pad underneath that's keeping majority of water from seeping through. And to help out with it, we're gonna have this hook and loop. This hook and loop is doing two things for us. One, it's making sure that this tonneau cover sits nice and tight on top of our bed, making it look a little bit cleaner, a little bit nicer, but is also helping us out, keeping that water from seeping through. And then we're gonna have the last place and that's gonna be on our bulkhead side. Our bulkhead side is gonna have this additional weather strip that just kind of sits on top and that will also prevent water or help water to not seep through. But we also will have something built into a tonneau cover. And it's not gonna be like a weather strip, but these are gonna be more like beams that run across. And what these beams are doing is kind of helping make sure everything stays nice and tight, especially here in the center. 'Cause that's gonna keep everything a little bit elevated. So since the center is elevated, what's gonna happen is when that water beads up on top of your tonneau cover, it's gonna give it somewhere to run off to so it doesn't pull up on your tonneau cover and then stretch it out. That's what this can handle. Now if there's any type of days where you have a lot of snow, it'll probably be fine with that. I'd just recommend clearing it off at the end of the day or at least doing it on a daily basis, 'cause you don't want all that snow really sitting on top of here, especially if it is a couple inches 'cause it could kind of warp the tonneau cover. And as far as how strong and sturdy it's gonna be, it does feel pretty good. But at the end of the day, if someone really wanted access to this, they could simply just walk over here, cut this open, and get whatever they needed. But the main thing about this is just keeping things out of sight and out of mind. In my opinion, I think this is still a great option because it's really easy to use and I think it does look pretty clean on the back of our truck today. Now, like I was saying earlier, there's plenty of great options, especially if you are looking for hard tonneau covers and etrailer actually does have a hard version of this that's also very affordable as well. The only downside to that is it's gonna be very heavy and it's gonna take up more of your bed space. While this is gonna be more compact and just easier to work with. And if you are curious about that installation process, because it is a super quick and easy thing to do, just stay tuned, we'll walk you through it. To begin our installation, I like to lay everything out and I also like to keep 'em in their respective locations. And what I mean by that is our rails, because they're gonna have a specific side they need to sit on. You're gonna have a right, that is gonna go on your passenger, and a left, that's gonna go on your driver's side, and they will be marked. I also like to do the same thing with our clamps. You're gonna have three per side, so I'll just put three on whichever side I need. (clamp clatters) And then we're gonna have the tonneau cover. I usually just keep that centered with some additional parts too, which we'll go over a little bit later on. I also like to grab a tape measure just so I can make sure everything's squared off. Where I like to start off with specifically is those rails. Now I told you which sides to put 'em on, but we need to make sure they're in the right orientation once they are on that side. And what I mean by that is we're gonna have this tab right here and this is going to be your tensioning device. We want that to be on your tailgate side. We also wanna make sure that this foam pad is gonna be facing downwards and is against your bed rails. After which you'll just place this on your bed rails, and this doesn't have to be perfect to begin with. You can roughly place it down. And then once we put our tonneau cover, then we can adjust that fit. We can start putting on the tonneau cover and you wanna make sure this is in the right orientation. So we just need to make sure that this bracket right here is gonna be on our bulkhead side. Once we've established that, then we just lift up, make sure it's centered and roughly place it on our vehicle against our bulkhead. And then we can make our connections. And when I'm resting this down on the side next to my bulkhead, I'm also scooting back these rails a bit just so I have a little bit more room to work with. And what this process is gonna look like is this. So we're gonna have that bracket. I push on this. You'll see there's a nut that's kind of popping outta place that's connected to a bolt. If you find that you know you're in the right direction. This section is actually gonna go into your rail. You're gonna have this channel right here where that bracket's gonna insert. And really, as far as other ones I've seen before, this is a really easy process. As you can see that just slid right into place. I've also done this a few times, so with time I've got a lot of practice. But we have this Allen key that's gonna come with our kit. We're just gonna go to that bolt now and then tighten this into place. Once you've done that on both sides, this is gonna be fully connected to your tonneau cover now. And now we just need to connect this to our bed. The way you need to do that is put on our clamps. But before I do that, I like to recenter this and kind of moving this a bit because that process, things are probably going to shift. And it doesn't have to be perfect. So if it's hanging off a little bit like that, that's okay. Once we put our clamps into place, then we'll be able to really adjust them completely. Something that's gonna help you level this out or square it off is gonna be making sure it's close enough to your bulkhead side, because you don't want something that's gonna have this huge gap here. What we're really looking for is underneath here you're gonna have that weather strip. You wanna make sure this is far enough where it sits on top of that bulk header, the front, near your cab. And I recommend just pulling that through all the way across so it sits flat. Something else that's gonna help you with this process is just grabbing your tape measure and just measuring out from the front of your bed to the front of your tonneau cover. You can do this on your tailgate side too if that's a little bit easier for you. Now it's okay if you don't perfectly line up everything. We got some tricks and tips later on to help make sure everything gets squared. Let's just move over to our clamps now. So what we're gonna do here is really talk about how this is working. So there's gonna be two parts of this clamp. We're gonna have the top section and then we're have the bottom section. That's gonna be right next to this hand knob at the bottom. That hand knob will actually completely detach. And I recommend starting off like that, it is just gonna make this process a bit easier 'cause you want this completely loosened up. Now where you are gonna place the clamp is pretty much anywhere on your rails except for these yellow sections. These yellow sections are actually gonna be where your ribs go across. So if it's lined up with that, they're gonna interfere one another. What I recommend typically is trying to space these out as far as possible. So I'm gonna try to go to the part furthest out, or closest to our tailgate over here. I wanna find a spot though that doesn't have anything that's gonna interfere with it underneath though. So I found a pretty flat spot here. I'm gonna start putting that on just by making sure they're pretty separate. Starting with that bottom part of the clamp, reaching underneath your rail, and with that top, it's gonna grab onto your tonneau cover rail. And the way it's gonna specifically do that is we're gonna have this cutout on this clamp here and that's gonna grab around this ridge inside of your rails. Once you've made it to that step, we'll grab our hand knob again. I recommend placing some pressure on top of that bolt so it doesn't pop out. And then you can tighten this back down. And when you do this, I recommend only doing it just a little bit because we might need to make some adjustments later on. So leaving it loose for adjustments is gonna be the best thing for you. And this is a good stage, really test your fit. So what I'm gonna do is just unbuckle this on both ends and unravel, and we're just checking for a few things to make sure everything's gonna latch on correctly, nothing's skewed, and most importantly, everything's gonna close properly. And what we're mainly looking for at that point is the end of the tonneau cover. Now I recommend keeping you tailgate open or in the lower position for this spot. We're trying to make sure this is gonna latch properly and it is gonna shut completely. (cover clatters) You'll hear a click, and then afterwards just come back through and just check how it's looking. Right now I'm really liking that look and I'm just gonna shut my tailgate. (tailgate slams) And if it shuts completely without stopping or your tonneau cover doesn't pop up, then you should be good. And at this point, it's really not a bad idea just (tailgate latch clicks) to check to see if this is gonna unravel properly. So we're just gonna grab this yellow strap. It should release. (cover pops) There it is. And with that unrolled, then I recommend coming back through to all those clamps that we loosely tightened earlier and we're gonna tighten them down completely now. Now you don't wanna tighten down too much where you feel like you'll sort of damage something. Just enough where you have a fair bit of resistance. Really there's not too much left. We're just gonna be grabbing these rubber end caps. They're pretty small to see, but really you're just gonna be grabbing those and putting them on the ends of these clamps. And it can be a little bit tricky sometimes. Sometimes if you just kind of thread it on, that's the best approach I find. But just getting it on initially, it's gonna be the trick. Well, after you have all six of those in place and all your clamps are tightened down, really I just recommend trying to unravel this tonneau cover one more time and make sure everything's still fitting properly. And if it is, then you can take it out for a ride. But that's just a look at the installation and some of the features of the etrailer Soft Roll-Up Tonneau Cover on the back of our 2017 Ford F-250 Super Duty. I'm Matt, thanks for watching.