Video Transcript for How to Install the etrailer Soft Roll-UpTonneau Cover on a 2025 Ram 1500

Hi, Matt with etrailer. If you have a 2025 Ram 1500 and you're trying to protect the back of your bed because maybe you might have some items back here that might be a little bit more sensitive to the elements, this is going to help keep out a lot of snow, water, anything else like that. So let's check out the etrailer soft roll-up tonneau cover. Now there are plenty of different types of tonneau covers out there, and you probably already notice that this one looks pretty soft and that's because it is. So there are some pros and cons to that. The pros are they're gonna be a lot more of a value option, a lot more on the economic side, but they'll still prevent a lot of that water, snow, or ice from getting in here.

What's also really nice is that they're super easy to work with and really easy and compact. But one of the downsides is they're not gonna be as secure as like a hard tonneau cover. And that's because if someone came by here, they could just walk over here, cut right into this, and grab whatever you have back here. So if you have anything that is more on the expensive side or that you're worried about getting stolen, then I'd recommend going with a hard style. But we can take a closer look at how this one's gonna operate.

It's pretty straightforward. You just gonna open up your tailgate. You'll find that we have two straps here. You can pull on either one, and that's where we release your tonneau cover. And this is gonna be a roll-up style.

So there's fold-up styles too. But what I like more about a roll-up style is that this is very compact, especially being a soft style, because with a more of a quad, tri, or a folding style, that takes up more of a section of your bed. As opposed to this, everything's rolled up pretty neatly right here and can kind of be moved around a little bit. So if you do need to put a lot of items back here, you definitely still have that ability. Now we do have more canister styles too.

But the drawback to a canister style is that's gonna take up underneath your bed as well. So if you need that full bed access underneath here, this is where this really shines. Now, of course, this will block a little bit of your back window, but honestly, that's not too big of a deal because this is almost lined up with your back seats back here. So it shouldn't really get in your way if you are using your back window to back up. And this will be held down with two buckles on either side and these straps are gonna help keep it in place so it doesn't unravel on you. Now, since we are talking about how it's gonna interact with the back of your vehicle, we can get a few measurements. So the first one I'm gonna get is gonna be that distance underneath the tonneau cover. In the rolled up position, this is gonna be just a little bit over 21 inches, which is pretty good. That's pretty much lined up with your bed rails. So if you have anything like a fifth-wheel in here, even if you had this fully rolled out, then it wouldn't get in the way of that. What's also nice is if you want to carry some fridges or anything that needs to be put in here, this doesn't take up much room, it should be fine in that respect. That should you get a measurement on how much room this has taken up in your bed, we can get that right now. And that's gonna be a little bit under 6 inches. So you're not gonna be missing much having this in your bed. Now, of course, if you have this completely loaded up with some taller, larger items, then they'd be pushed all the way back here. Then this will take up a little bit of space. But it is nice that this can kind of move a bit. But what I also really like about this is that it's really easy to install and uninstall, but we'll talk a little bit more about that later on. Next step, let's see how far this is sticking up. So we can get two measurements. We can see how this is sitting on just as the bed rail, that rail is sitting at a little bit under an inch. So with the tonneau of cover on it, it's probably gonna stick up maybe slightly over an inch with it all the way unrolled. But with it in this position, it's gonna sit a little bit under 5 inches. Again, that's not gonna sit up too high and it shouldn't block you from using your back window. But like I said, this is also gonna be really easy to install and uninstall and the main reason is gonna be this style of clamp. All you really have to do is turn this hand knob and then once that's all the way loosened up, you can take it right off. There's gonna be three per side, so for a total of six clamps, and then you can take this whole thing right off your bed. So doesn't really take any time, especially if you need to take this through a car wash, you probably don't want this tonneau cover on there while you do that. So that's really something nice if you wanna keep your vehicle clean too. And right next to that clamp, you notice we're gonna have this kind of foam pad underneath it. It might be a little bit hard to see. What that's doing though is just adding some extra protection for your vehicle so it doesn't scratch anything up and keep a lot of that water from seeping through. Something else to think about though is where these rails are sitting. So right here where we have that stake pocket, that's when we blocked. So that's one of the downsides to this one. I know we have some other options on our website that really just kind of sit inside of your bed, which those are nice and they sit a lot more low profile. They give you more of a sleek design to the back of your bed. The downside is it's gonna take up more of that bed space. So if you can't really afford to lose any space, then this would really shine for that. And since we're over here anyways, we can kind of take a closer look at this adjuster right here. What this is meant to do is to make sure that the tonneau of cover stays nice and tight back here. 'Cause a lot of times over a lot of use, these do loosen up a bit. So what this is designed to do is you can actually adjust where this bracket sits. So once this does loosen up over time, you can actually push this out some to make sure you still have a good tight fit. To really show you how this works, I'll just unravel this all the way. So we're gonna have this end here. It's just gonna lift out and seat into place right here. You're just gonna apply pressure until this locks into place. And with that locked into place, you can see that we have this really smooth fit on top. Now there's a couple reasons why we have this smooth fit. One of those reasons is we also have these supporting beams going across. There's gonna be three of them. And what that also does is when water is really beating up or cooling on top of this tonneau cover, instead of sitting in the center where that could weigh down and stretch this out, what it's gonna do instead is it's gonna give it somewhere the runoff so it's not sitting on top of the tonneau cover itself. And you're gonna have this hook and loop over here on the edge of it. What that's meant to do is so you can come by, pull it downwards to make sure you still have a nice tight bed. In my opinion though, I think this is a great option, especially if you're just looking for something to keep out any of that extra snow or water from inside the back of your bed. And really, it is a great theft deterrent because a lot of times with any type of tonneau cover, if someone can't see whatever's in your bed, then it's gonna be outta mind as well. Now if you are looking for that option that offers more security, each roller does make another option and that's gonna be a hard fold-up tonneau cover. That's great if you do want that extra security, but the downside is it's gonna take up more space in your bed. So if you want something a lot more compact, lightweight, but really easy to install or uninstall, then these can be probably one of your best bets. If you are curious to see that installation, just stay tuned, we'll walk you through the process. To start off the installation, I like to lay everything out, and the way I like to do is kind of putting everything to their relative sides. So I'm gonna put my rails on my bed rails, and I'm gonna put all the clamps that I need for that side over there. And then I like to keep all the hardware in the center that we'll use to install everything. And I also like to gravitate, measure, and make sure everything's even. And of course, right next to me, I'm gonna have the tonneau cover itself. Then we're gonna come over to both of our bed rails, taking one at a time, and we're gonna push this over as far as we can. So it'll kind of lines up with the end of our bed rail. You can just kind of roughly place it there. It doesn't have to be perfect. We're gonna do this on both sides. And this is just gonna help installing our tonneau cover itself to the rails a bit easier. And to actually install the tonneau cover itself, all you're really gonna do is grab it, gonna place it here in the center like I've done, and then we're just gonna grab this tab over here with that set screw in it and slide it into the rail. Now, you're probably gonna have to move this rail back a little bit to get everything lined up. I'm gonna push it in. Now, if you're finding that you have some resistance, you might just have to adjust that bolt or that set screw either by loosening it up a bit or just sliding it back some. But after we do that, it should slide right into place. Once it's fully installed in there, then you take that Allen key again and then just tighten this down until you have this pretty on there, pretty good. We have a bunch of resistance. And once you have both rails installed, now we're going to come by and adjust this a bit. So you lift up on a bit, you find that you have this weather strip, we wanna make sure we lay that out or pull it out some so it sits flat on top of your bulkhead. You can just run your hand underneath there and pull it out with your fingers until this is all the way flush with that bulkhead. But now we're just gonna kind of adjust everything to make sure everything's in the correct location and it's even. So we do this one of two ways. You could just walk over here and kind of gauge it, making sure it looks pretty even. But I feel to be a little bit more precise, so I'm gonna grab a tape measure. Measure from the side to the end of that bed rail to make sure it's even on both ends. Once I've done that, I've adjusted everything, then I also like to make sure that our tonneau cover is in the right location, so I don't want it sitting too close to our cab where it's gonna be making contact, but I don't want it shifted too far back towards the tailgate or that weather strip won't be on that bulkhead. So once we've adjusted that, then we can start securing this down. For now, we can move on to the clamps. So this clamp is gonna be in three parts, and there's gonna be three of them. They're pretty easy to use. You're gonna have this hand knob on the bottom. I recommend actually removing that before you install this. This makes this process a little bit easier. I'm gonna set that down, separate the bottom of the bracket from the top of the bracket, and we're gonna come over to our bed rail. Now, you notice we do have this yellow taped area, that's actually telling us where not to put the clamp because that's where a beam's gonna go across. So you can either put it on this side or the other side of it. Now I wanna try to get this as close to the edge of my bed just so we're getting a good even fit all the way through. But something we wanna watch out for is we don't have anything conflicting with us underneath this bed rail. So I'll try this out just by sliding that bottom of the bracket back into place and seeing how this fits. If you're feeling that it's wobbling around a lot, this probably isn't gonna be a great fit for you, but right now, I think I found a pretty flush spot. Once you've done that, you'll hold it in place or grab that hand knob again and then tighten this down. Now we don't wanna tighten this down all the way, I just wanna get a little bit of resistance 'cause we might need to make some adjustments later on and how this tonneau cover sits. But after when you fully install this one, then you take the other two that will go on the same side. You are gonna place one in the center as best as you can and then another one closest to your tonneau cover as well. So after when I fully installed this, I found that I had to make some adjustments. So before I had those bracket in front of that taped off area, but the issue was this rail was sticking too far in and we had some overhang. And so that was kind of narrowing in at the bed of our truck and would not give us a great fit. So I tried moving this back, I was able to push this in a bit more. And you can kind of see how those bracket's grabbing on there a little bit better now too. You wanna make sure that it's perfectly contoured to that rail. We have that indention in there. Once you've done that and your rail is more flush with your bed rails, then you know you have a good fit. And now we can just test this out. So I'm just gonna undo this buckle and unravel this. And here we're just trying to make sure everything's in the right location. We don't have too much overhang on either side, and it's gonna play nicely with the bed of our truck. So you're gonna have some of this on there, you just take it right off. And we're just gonna put it into the end of here. We'll find that we have some resistance. You'll just pull down on it 'til it latches fully. Then afterwards I'd like to just come back through, make sure this hook and loop is grabbing on here all the way. It's not acting funny like we don't have too much overhang or anything like that. And the cover's looking pretty smooth up top. The last check I like to do is just to make sure that this tailgate will shut completely. So I'll just move a few things outta my way. Try this out. And that's looking pretty good. This is looking like we are getting a good seal underneath. So after when you have this installed completely, then you can come back through and tighten those clamps the rest of the way down. Now, a little note about when you tighten these down, you wanna make sure when you do this, you don't over tighten it so you don't want too much resistance 'cause it could strip something. You just want enough where you have a fair bit amount of resistance but you don't feel like you're exerting too much force behind there. And we'll also gonna grab these little end cap. Those are gonna be these little rubber pieces like that. That's just gonna go right underneath this handle where we have that bolt coming through. That's just gonna give you a little bit more protection just in case you do store anything else in here. Well, when we have everything fully installed, then we can just close it up once again, testing out one more time to make sure nothing's shifted or changed, shut our tailgate too. And it still feels pretty good. And if yours does feel pretty good too, then you can take it out for a ride. But that's just a look at the etrailer soft roll-up tonneau cover on the back of our 2025 Ram 1500. I'm Matt, thanks for watching.