Video Transcript for How to Install Your Westin Hard Tri-Fold Tonneau Cover - 2024 Ford F-150

Hello neighbor, this is Curt with etrailer, and today, we're gonna take a look at the Westin hard tri-fold tonneau cover on our 2024 Ford F-150. Now, the F-150 we have today is the 5.5-foot bed version. There is also a 6.5-foot bed version of this tonneau cover, but essentially, installation and the features are gonna be pretty close to similar. Now a tonneau cover is an excellent way to keep the items in your truck bed dry and free of debris, but a hard tonneau cover is also gonna do a really good job of keeping it secure. So this hard aluminum shell that we have here is really, really difficult to cut through. So it acts as an anti-theft measure as well.

We've got these rubber seals all along the edges here on both the driver and the passenger side, and that's gonna do a really good job of keeping that rain and snow and dust and things out of our truck bed. We also have a seal up here at our bulkhead that's gonna help anything, any runoff from up here on the cab from getting in. And we have something very similar back here at our tailgate. And as we get into our tailgate, let's go ahead and take a look at how it operates. What we have on either side are pinch latches, and you don't have to operate them simultaneously in order to get them to work.

All you need to do is do one side and it'll come up on both the passenger and the driver's side. So here is that tailgate seal that I was talking about. Here's the pinch latch over here on our passenger side, and it's gonna operate both sides as you pinch it in. In fact, we have these pinch latches on each one of our panels. Now, in the case of this panel here, because I don't have any strap or anything that can really secure this down if I want to drive with it open like this, I wouldn't leave it open to this degree.

But what these latches are gonna do on each panel is because it's securing it down, that's gonna be a lot less vibration and rattle as I'm driving. So that's gonna make this a much less noisy and much more comfortable ride. So I'm gonna go ahead and do the pinch latch here on this panel. We'll fold it up to here. And as we come up, on both the driver and the passenger side, we've got these latches for our safety straps.

Now these we can latch in and that would allow us to drive with the tonneau cover open in case we have any cargo that comes up higher than the cover itself. Installation on this tonneau cover is actually really simple, especially compared to some other tonneau covers that I've installed. So all you're gonna have is the rails and these clamps. Westin is gonna provide you with any of the tools that you would need to do this in the packaging. The only thing that you might wanna provide is some sort of a cutting tool, like a box cutter or a scissor, and that's for the foam seal that's here on top of our bulkhead that you really can't see once this is on. And that's gonna run passenger to driver's side up here at the top of the bulkhead, just creating an extra seal up there. But other than that, everything is provided. Installation is pretty simple. It is something that, if you're pretty handy, you could do on your own, it would probably take you less than an hour. But if, you know, installing things like that are difficult for you, try and use our dealer locator on our website, that'll connect you with an installer close to you so you can get this on your favorite truck. And installation is gonna start up here at the bulkhead with our foam seal. Now, this has an adhesive backing and what you're going to do is bump it right up against your truck rails here, and you're gonna wanna apply it not where it's curving over. So right where the flat part starts is where you wanna put it, and you're gonna run this end to end between your rails along the bulkhead, cutting off any kind of trim at the end. Now, the next step is going to be to put up our rails and install those. So just to show you what we're gonna need on each side, we've got our clamp fronts and our clamp backs. We've got three sets of those. We've got our hex bolts here, and we've got our knobs along with the appropriate Allen tool. This piece here will also go on very similar to how our brackets are. And this is going to be for the load support for our tonneau cover. Now, the next thing is going to be to identify the specific rail to go on your driver and on your passenger side. This tab up here, which is where the actual tonneau cover itself is going to attach, should be toward the front. And on the inside here, you're gonna find this rubber weather stripping, which is gonna hug our rail. So we're just gonna go ahead and put this up into place. I'm gonna move it all the way to the front as much as I can. And that should have us lining up almost perfectly, really, with the back end here at the tailgate. So when it comes to our clamps, you can identify the clamp front as this piece here. It's got an ovular bolt hole here in the front, and at the top of it, it's got this T-fitting that's gonna fit underneath our rail here through a T-slot. There are slots to get into there. They are located here, here, and here. And as you can see, we've already got our front and our middle bracket up. So this is just gonna slide right into there, and I'm gonna move it toward the rear near the tailgate. The next piece is going to be our backing, which you're going to see here. It is L-shaped very similar to the front. It's just got these teeth in the back of it here, and those are gonna grip the underside of the rail on our truck. We're also gonna grab our bolt, so we're gonna put this in, we're gonna make sure that the lip of this is on top of the lip of our front, and we're gonna try to slide this back kind of as far as we can maybe get it. There is a little nib underneath here, so I'm gonna try to insert it this way and slide it back. So just so we can get our rail secured down as close to the end as we can. Then as I move it back, I can get to about right here. I'm gonna take a bolt, run it through, and get that secured. Now, I'm not gonna tighten it all the way down just yet. I just want to get the bolt threaded a little bit so that it's not gonna go anywhere. And I'm gonna use the provided hex tool to assist with that. Now, the next piece I'm gonna grab is the knob. Now, there is a bolt hole underneath here and what we're gonna do is as this knob tightens, it's gonna push the backing upward like that until it's snug up against the very top of the underside here. That's why I left this front bolt hole just a little bit loose so we can move up and down that slot and making sure I'm just moving this toward the back as much as I can too and make it sure it stays there. And once I get that into a good snug position, I'm gonna go ahead and grab my hex tool and we'll tighten down the bolt in the front. And what this is going to do is it's gonna control the pitch of the lip here so that as we go down, we can make sure that this is coming straight across so that when we close our tailgate or our tonneau cover here at the tailgate, we can make sure that it's like laying in here properly and it's not gonna be popping up on us and not latching down. So the last bracket that we have is our support rod bracket, and it's gonna have this little knob here at the end, but it's gonna function very similar to the other brackets. It's gonna have this single bolt in the middle. There is no knob coming up from underneath. The teeth on here are gonna swivel a little bit for us and assist us a little bit with the pitch. So the way that this is gonna go in is we're gonna put it up here in the slot closer to the front. Might have to loosen it a little bit more. And what we're gonna do is slide this until it's located in between these two yellow and green arrow indicators. And once we have it in place there, we're gonna grab our hex tool and tighten it down. So I am holding this in place just to make sure that the teeth are located kind of higher up and pressed up against that underside of the bed rail. Get this good and snug, make it tight rather. Now you can do this at any point. Now, some people prefer to do this toward the end, some toward the beginning, but what you have here is a drain tube. There's a little nozzle here toward the front for that drain tube to go through. And that's really just gonna eliminate any extra water from gathering up inside of your rails. Now in this particular truck bed, we have a pop out here that if we take that out, we'll have a hole we can run through here at the front of the bed. In some cases, you don't have that. You'll actually have to drill a hole to get it through. Since this is not a permanent install that we're doing today, we're not gonna be cutting it out, but that's generally where you're going to find it. But all you're gonna need to do is take one end of your drain hose and fit it around this nozzle and work it all the way up. Next step is going to be to get the tonneau cover up into the truck bed. So it's possible you could do it on your own. It is a little bit awkward to maneuver. It's not terribly heavy, again, just awkward. So if you have a friend to help you out with this, that's just gonna make it that much easier. But as you set this up here, a couple of things to look for. One, these straps should be facing the cab or the front. Two, you've got this kind of rubber flange here in the back that you want to be draped over the front of the truck bed, in between the cab and the truck bed. The next thing you wanna make sure of is that you get your bolt holes lined up with the tabs that are on our rails. So once we have that in place and everything lined up, we're gonna take these smaller black bolts. These have a little rubber washer underneath to help seal 'em down and keep any kind of debris and water out of it. And we're just going to get these threaded in to the bolt holes that we lined up up here near the cab. Now, I'm not gonna tighten these down completely because before I tighten these down completely, I'm gonna want to kind of test that our length and alignment is okay. So I'm really just gonna get these kind of, you know, snug for now just so they're not gonna shift or move on us, really, before opening up my tonneau cover, deploying it completely, and making sure it lines up with our tailgate. So now that I've gone ahead and deployed the tonneau cover, I've made sure that all of my latches are going in correctly, all the way down to the tailgate. Putting the tailgate up, the seal is working really well. So at this point, I'm gonna go ahead and tighten the bolts down up here at the bulkhead. And as I'm tightening these down, that rubber washer underneath there is expanding and flattening out, making it sealed so that no moisture or debris is gonna get in there. So our last step is gonna be to put up our support rods. Now for this, you're gonna find one end with this push tab going up and down, the other end, you're gonna have this kinda little swivel lock right here to loosen and tighten it. So the end I'm gonna start with is that end with the swivel lock and that is gonna end up going right here, which is on our rod support bracket that we installed earlier with the rails. So I'm gonna go ahead and unlock it and snap that on into place there. Now one thing that we do have that was included on our rails are these little holders for it. So when the tonneau cover is deployed all the way down, we have a place to keep these aside. And when we have it all the way open like we do now, we could push up on our tab and push it into place and secure our tonneau rover upright. So when it comes time to close it up, we're gonna go ahead and detach our safety straps. We do have a loop here to get them secured and keep them out of our way. And then we're just gonna walk it down and the weight of it actually really helps it out when it comes to clamping down. So as we move our way back to the tailgate here, get a nice snug fit there, go ahead and close our tailgate, and our load is secure and we can expect it to be free of a lot of dust and pretty dry as well. So that's a look at the Westin hard tri-fold tonneau cover. And if you have any questions about it or if you've got some experience with this tonneau cover, go ahead and leave them in the comments below. We would love to share them with other neighbors just like you so they can make the best decision for themselves. Once again, this is Curt with etrailer. Thanks for stopping by.