Video Transcript for Installation: Leer Soft Tonneau Cover on a 2021 Ford F-250 Super Duty

Hey everybody, Ryan here e-trailer. Today on our 2021 Ford Ford F-250, we're gonna be showing you how to install the Leer Soft Roll-up Tonneau Cover. But before we do that, let's check it out and make sure that this something's gonna work for you. So when it comes to picking out a tonneau cover for your truck there's a ton of different options out there in today's age, a ton of different styles to pick from. And with these, I'm sure a lot of people have seen these types before, kind of just your classic tonneau cover. I know when I think of a tonneau cover, this is what I think of.

You see them out there all the time. And there's a reason for that, they work pretty good. As far as what you would use a tonneau cover for or to figure out if this one's gonna work good for you, I think of three different things. Are you looking for aesthetics Are you looking to improve the look of your truck Next thing that comes to mind is keeping stuff dry. And that's probably one of the most important things, right, is putting the cover on here to keep your bed dry.

And lastly, security, do you keep a bunch of expensive tools and stuff back here and you want it to be secure And with this one, I feel like it covers all three of those bases fairly well. As far as the aesthetics go, the way it looks, for a roll-up cover, I think this is about as good as you can get. It sits nice and tight, actually, the cover's, not super loose and wrinkly, and just kind of there. So I think it's relatively pleasing to the eye. It's pretty low profile.

Maybe, I don't know, the exact measurement here, we'll maybe give you that in a moment, but probably an inch or so, probably sticks up over the bed. So for a roll-up cover, I think this is about as good as you're gonna get. And, when it comes to keeping your stuff dry, it kind of comes over. So if you look here, so it kind of comes right over. So when water comes down, it'll roll off.

I've seen mixed reviews with these, some people get really lucky and it keeps everything dry. Other people say it leaks, which I could see that. I mean, it kind of is what it is, it's not 100% sealed all the way around, and really good like that. But, at the end of the day, even if a little water does sneak in there, how much is really gonna get inside, so I feel like it'd do a pretty good job with that. And, lastly, when it comes to security, so keeping your stuff secure, preventing people from getting in, a lot of these trucks now have a locking tailgate. So when you lock your truck, the tailgate's not gonna open, there's no way to actually roll the cover up without getting in there. So, this one keeps an honest person honest, more or less, with it just being a vinyl top, could you get in if you really wanted to, absolutely. Someone could cut this this or whatever it is, whatever they wanna do to get inside of there. But with that said, it's a cover, you're gonna have to spend a little bit of work on it to get inside of it. And it's kind of just one of those things, if your stuff is out of sight, and out of mind, chances are pretty good most people aren't gonna mess with it. The latch is here that's how you're gonna operate the cover. So you'll pull the tailgate down, and you can squeeze these in on each side. And when you're doing this, all I do is kind of keep your thumbs on top here, 'cause if you just unclip these, there's some tension there, it's a little floppy even kinda, so kind of controls a little more. And so that's how you break it loose. Then you're just gonna roll it up. So it's definitely manageable to do with one person it's not heavy or really all that awkward honestly. So we'll work this all the way to the front. And once you get it like this, you're gonna have some straps here. So if you wanna drive around with a like this, you take your straps, just clip them in, that way, the cover is not gonna move around whenever you try to unroll, or whenever you're driving down the road. So when this thing's rolled up, one of the benefit is, it's not gonna take up, essentially any bed space really, which is an important thing on some of the shorter bed trucks, you need the space so unlike some of the other ones, like the roll-up ones that actually go into a canister, a lot of times and canisters are gonna take up, a good foot or so back here. If that doesn't bother you, who cares right I mean, it's not gonna bother you. But some people need all this space and utilize all space, especially if you have maybe like a fifth wheel, or something like that and gear that you use all the time, you might need that extra space right here. So definitely one of the benefits to it. There's other covers as well that are like tri-folds, or quad-folds where they fold up in sections. So you might have a handful of one or two foot sections, that you fold over in on itself, and they give you essentially full bed space here but one of the issue is, as they get propped up like this, and there's some rods that kind of hold them up, and they essentially cover up your whole back windshield, or your whole back window here. So you can't see out on the back window, which is, you know, not ideal. I don't know most people that prefer to drive that way, but it's nice to get the full bed space, but you kind of have to sacrifice that. And so with this one, kind of get the best of both worlds, you're gonna be able to roll it out and have all your space, and it's only gonna cover up your window a couple inches, so you have no problem seeing out the back of it. So even when the cover's in place, it's really not gonna get in your way at all or anything like that. Even with a drop in bedliner, like we have here today, where all of our clamps are, they're easily accessible to get to. On this bedliner, there's some indentations, and it's honestly right where our clamps seem to go. So that's pretty convenient, the lights in our bed, not gonna be interfered with, our tie-down points, everything like that. So we still have complete functionality of our bed, how it came right from the factory. And we're not really not gonna have to sacrifice anything like that, as far as putting the tonneau cover on goes, and have to really modify the truck or mess with any of these factory options or things of that nature. So it's always nice to be able to add something like this to your vehicle, and still be able to maintain all that stuff that you'd normally use anywhere. So one of the big questions we do get asked a lot in regards to a tonneau cover is if it's gonna cover up your stake pockets. And with this one, the answer is no, you're still gonna be able to utilize those. So these trucks are people using for workshops, you see ladder racks on them, things of that nature. And so if you need to a stake pocket, it's perfect, perfect setup, you could still run this tonneau cover, and use your accessories that go into the state pocket. That's not something you see with every single cover on the market. Some of them block it off and you lose the functionality of it. If you're not worried about it, really not a huge deal, but it is a big deal to some people, so even with the rails on here like this, we're still gonna have full access to those. You also get a lot of people wondering about if they can leave a 5th wheel head in here. And still be able to use the cover and roll at all. And I definitely understand that these 5th wheel heads are super heavy kind of a pain to pull in and out and I'd probably wanna leave it in myself. And with this one, I see it working out. The lowest part here, the side rail, that's gonna essentially be flush from the top of your bed. Okay, so unless your 5th wheel head exceeds that and sticks up higher than your bed, which in most cases won't, I don't think I've ever seen that. Three's pretty close, but they're usually down a little ways. You'd also, if that's where your 5th wheel head are sitting, chances are really really good, you're still gonna be able to leave it in here and roll your cover up on top of it without any interference issues. So at the end of the day, pretty nice roll-up tonneau cover, actually. It's really just gonna depend on what you're looking to do. And if you want to keep yourself pretty dry, just essentially keep it covered and have an upgrade that will make your truck look a little bit nicer. Definitely go something like this. Like I said, I think it looks pretty good and should do a pretty good job. If you're someone that's really hard on your stuff and you know you're looking for essentially ultimate security, someone that cannot get into I really like the roll-up type tonneau covers, particularly the aluminum ones. Well, they roll up into a canister. For the most part that work pretty smooth, they look really good. And that's gonna give someone a lot of trouble trying to get inside of that one. Especially compared to, we kind of talked about earlier, those quad-folds or tri-fold ones that fold up into sections. Those are all for the same benefits but they're just kind of clunky, kind of just a pain to operate, I think the roll up ones have their advantage here, but other than that, it's just really gonna boil down to what you're looking to do and what you're looking for out of the cover. And as far as the installation goes, this one really wasn't bad at all, since you put your rails on, they clamp in and the cover actually kind of just snaps into place. And that's really all there is to it. So we shouldn't really run into a lot of issues. But speaking of that, why don't we go ahead and put it all together now. To begin our installation, we're gonna be here, working in the bed of our truck. And first things first, we're gonna need to get the rails on. So these are side specific, so pay attention to that. One quick way you can tell is this deal here, this mechanism and this catch, that's gonna be towards the back of the truck. So just keep that in mind. So for example, this is gonna be our driver side, driver side rail. But we're gonna have some channels and some tracks that run through here. And I like to get our clamps on. So I put two of our clamps on already. And what you're gonna do is take the clamp, and there's that, it looks like a T, that's just gonna slide into the rail. And so I roughly got them in place, pretty straightforward, one in the back, one towards the middle, and then one all the way up towards the front. So now that we have this set up, we'll go ahead and actually get it on the top of our bed here. So with our rail like this, now, how this is gonna work, is we're gonna sit this up against the edge of our bed and the clamps are gonna go around it, and when we tighten these down, we're gonna pinch it and kind of keep our rail in place. So sometimes we'll have to take our clamps apart to make this happen, other times we can kind of sneak them in, but we'll try it first. You're gonna hold this, push your rail up all the way where it needs to go. And then, I'm just gonna try to work everything in place here. That'll go over it. And same deal with this one back here. Hopefully we can get it up there. And once you do, you'll kind of feel it, kind of lift up into place but once we're holding it where it needs to be, we can take our wrench and we're just gonna snug them down. So what I like to do, is more or less just get it kind of snug. And that way we can let go of our rail, kind of take a look at everything and make sure it's sitting where we want it and it's properly clamped and everything else but doing this alone you kind of have to make those changes there. If you have a friend helping you it's a little bit easier, but it's definitely manageable by yourself. So once you have the rail where you want it, you know just it's pretty simple, make sure it's always far forward as you can get it, it looks square level and everything. Once I had it like that, I just came back with a wrench and just tighten these down completely, just essentially get it snug and a little bit more, that's all you need. And then on the bottom, they're gonna give you some more Allen head bolts and on the bottom of our clamps, there's some threads, and with these, just for now, get this started. And I'm just gonna get it hand tight until it stops. Then just put it ever so slight, maybe a quarter turn on it just to stop it from kinda wanting to back itself out. Do the same thing for the other clamps. I mean literally, we're gonna repeat the same process over on the other side of our truck to get that rail put on as well. Now at this point, you would take the seal and run the seal across the bulkhead here, all the way to the other side. So make sure the surface is clean. You can use some rubbing alcohol or something like that to ensure proper seal and this is just two-sided sticky tape, you just stick it down to it. This will help obviously keep everything sealed and prevent water from getting in everything else. So today, for video purposes, we're not gonna be putting this on, we're just test fitting this cover here, so really don't wanna stick it to the truck here and I have to take it off and everything else. So with that said, straightforward stuff, put the seal on and you'll be in good shape. Now if you grab our cover, we're gonna keep it rolled up. But this part here, we're gonna have this track and a slot here. You're gonna take your bolt. So this bolt will have like a knob and some washers and stuff on it, take it all off, just take the bolt, then slide this through, and then this is gonna line up with the front corners here. So on the front corner, there's a slot where that bolts gonna drop through. And then it's ridged, so there's some notches in it. And we're gonna make sure that we're on the appropriate one that way everything lines up nice and tight. So I talked about the ridges here, what I did is just kinda undo our cover to make this easier to work with, just unclipped it. But you want these ridges to line up with these, and you wanna be the same on each side that way everything's square. So I think I'm just gonna go up four on each side, hopefully we can make that happen. It's just kind of tough to see and get to but that's what we're gonna shoot for, so when that's in, then just drop our bolts through those slotted holes on each side, get it pretty close, and then just gonna roll this out a couple times just to make it easier to work with and make sure everything's gonna be square and lined up. So it's looking pretty good, I think what we might do now is go underneath and did everything tucked now. So if we look, we kinda pulled the cover out made sure it was pretty close, which it was. I just pushed it up and out of the way. And this is where we can see these ridges. So easier than I thought it was gonna be actually, so I counted up four and then on each side, here to take flat washer, put that over the bolt. Gonna take your split lock washer, put that over as well. And you have a knob, put that on and tighten it down and then find, once this is tight, there's a stopper, we'll put that on at the very end so go ahead and turn over and put everything tightened down. So once you have one side done, you'll just do the same thing over on the other side. So from here, really simple, just roll over the cover, make sure it's coming out how you want it. And when it lines up, these ends here to put into those keepers there, and lock it into place. And this is gonna be tight, that's normal. That's kind of how you want it actually. That way it looks good, but that will kind of lock in. And keep in mind too, you know when you're doing this, the cover is gonna stretch a little bit once it's on there for a couple days, so a little bit tighter now probably better. If it's way too tight or way too loose, the knobs that we tightened down earlier, if you remember those holes we're slotted, you can loosen that up a little bit and move it up a couple of notches or back a couple of notches to make that adjustment but it seems like ours is about spot on, so once that's clipped in, we'll just go along the sides here, and push the top of our cover onto the hook and loop straps to keep everything sealed. And that'll finish up our look at and our installation of the Leer Soft Roll-up Tonneau Cover on our 2021, Ford F-250..