Leer Hard Tonneau Cover - Tri Fold - Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic

Video Transcript for Leer Hard Tonneau Cover Installation - 2017 Ford F-150

What's up everybody. It's AJ with etrailer.com. Today, we're gonna be checking out this LEER tri-folding hard tonneau cover on our 2017 Ford F-150. This is gonna be a hard tonneau cover that folds in three places. So I like that it's got that reinforced plastic and fiberglass right here. And you have the aluminum frame around there.

So you know that it's gonna hold up. If you we're to set a box or something on top of there, it'd be just fine. The cover's gonna stick up three quarters an inch from the bed rail. So it's not gonna impede your view at all. It's pretty low profile and looks pretty nice on the truck.

Now it will get a little bit taller when you fold the panels back and even rest it up with the prop rods that is gonna block your view and we'll show you that here in a little bit. The tonneau on top not only improves the way the truck looks but is also nice to keep whatever's in your bed away from prying eyes or just keeps it safe from the elements too. So if it rains and all that, or any elements comes out on it, it won't get to whatever's in your bed. Now, it's really easy to use. I'll bring the tailgate down and show you there's gonna be on both sides, these latches right here, and you just push 'em together, which releases this latch, so you can fold this panel back.

I'm gonna do the same thing right here in the middle. There's gonna be one more right here. Now, if you want partial bed access, you can leave it folded up like this, undo this clip and just plug it in there. Now you do that on both sides and it'll help hold it in place when you're driving down the road. Now, if you want to fold that access you can put the clips back in this way.

Come back to the latch, fold up this section right here and then use these prop rods that are included with it. And you'll do that on both sides too. Now, when it folded up here, there's still gonna be four and three quarters of an inch of the bed covered up just by that front part of the tonneau, but that's not too bad. But as you can see it fold up against the backlash, you're not gonna be able to use your back window or anything. So that's just something to think about. Now, if you really do need that full bed you can take the cover off fully. Just come over here, these hand knobs, loosen these on both sides, and then detach the emergency latches here that just help make sure that if something was to fail it is attached to the rail still. So it won't come back out. Something else to consider is how much space you actually have. So from the bed of the truck to under the side of the tonneau covering about 21 inches to work with. So just keep that in mind with whatever you wanna store in here, that's as much space as you got. Now, it might be a little different if you don't have the drop-in bed liner but that's what this vehicle has. Another thing that's nice about this tonneau cover is the low profile rails here. They're not sticking up too far above the bed and they don't take up that much space on the inside of our bed rails. You can see our stake pockets right here, still exposed and still usable. Now we talked about this tonneau cover. If there's anything that sticks out that maybe makes you think this one's not for you, let me give you a couple other options. So if the visibility was a big issue without not being able to see down the back window you can get a canister style tonneau cover. So that's gonna go and feed into a canister but the canister's gonna be down in the bed. So it's gonna take up some of that space up front. So if bed space is really important to you that might not be the way to go either. The other option would be the back flip revolver and that's gonna roll up, but it's gonna be a hard tonneau cover, and it's reinforced with aluminum. So you're gonna roll it up and it will take up a little bit of space here by your headrest, but you'll still have all this portion up here to see out that back window. As far as installation goes, it's not too bad. It might help to have a second set of hands just to set this portion up on the bed and make sure it's straight on both sides. Otherwise you can do most of it yourself. It comes with the tools you need to do it and the nice thing is you don't have to modify your bed. There's no drain tubes needed, so you don't have to drill any holes or anything. You pretty much get it done, pretty quick. Check out how we did it. Got our clamps here and do some pre-assembly. So we're gonna slide this in the bottom channel. Just like that. And you can see, we already did that up front there's gaps here in the rails where you can put in to slide 'em in around the objects that are in the way. There's another one here and now I'll lift up the rail. Put it towards the bed and you should be able to go up and under to get these clamps to come up underneath the rail. We'll go a little bit lower than we need to and then bring it up. We have a drop in bed liner here and you will have to work around the contours in the bed. You see how this sticks out a little bit That's not a good spot for that clamp so I can go over here or over here just to move it outta the way. So then it fits up and under there, like it should. Once I got the clamps in place and fed up towards the top of the bed rails, I can slide the rail to the very front. And we'll come back and use the hand knob to tighten this up first on all three of 'em. It's gotta have it hold that clamp and that rail in place. So you wanna start to tighten the knob just when it starts making contact. Don't over tighten it. Now we'll come back with the five millimeter Allen key and tighten these bolts down. I'm just gonna draw the clamps in. Gonna get this one kind of tight and then gonna move on to the next one and then come back and tighten evenly. Now you wanna repeat that entire process on the opposite side. Now you might need a second set of hands on this one. So John's here to help me out and just walk this up to the front and set it in place. We're gonna make sure that that padded portion is on the front of our bed. And it's gonna come down into the side channels here on our rails. Looking up front, we got the dust cover that needs to be in between the cab and the bed. So if it's folded up underneath, you can kinda get that out of there. So it looks like this. Now we're gonna go underneath the tile cover. And what we're gonna do is install this. And one of the key holes now that are right there up front towards the cab, cause I need to go ahead and loosen this and this hand knob. So this block can drop and give you a little more space. What we're gonna do is put this up and in the hole and then you slide it over in the slot and it won't come back out and we'll go and tighten it down. Now underneath, I can show you, give you a better idea of what I was talking about. We're gonna put this portion up in the round hole, slide over the slot and make sure that this portion goes in the front most key hole here. So it should go in that slot so you can tighten it down and it'll attach there. Now with that tighten down, we can come back and add our safety strap. You got the clip right here, that's gonna go in the second keyhole. And that's done like that. And with that done, you can go ahead and repeat that process on the other side. Now that they're tightened down, we can go ahead and roll out the tonneau cover. Just fold it out and make sure it sits right. You might have to make some kind of adjustments if it's not sitting square. And there's pretty easy to do that. Looks like ours is latching really good. That's one thing we wanna make sure, that it latches on every point and if it doesn't, it's not too bad to have to adjust. You might have to move the whole cover forward or backwards or make sure it's square. One thing that's kind of common is maybe these strikers don't line up but you use the smaller head tool here to loosen this and slide it where you need, just to make sure that this latches in every time correctly. Looks like it's got a good hold here. So I think we're good. Another thing to check is make sure your tailgate closes with the cover down completely. Make sure it doesn't hit or anything like that. That's where, you know, you need to move it forward, if there was contact. Looks like it's good goes right under there and it's catching. One thing I will note though is that the weather seal is a little stiff. So when you hit the button you see it doesn't pop out quite like it should. It takes a little bit but that's gonna wear down over time, you know parking outside and the more you use it and close it it's gonna kind of bend it back a little bit and not be as aggressive. Now we're gonna take our prop rods, make sure the side with the latch on it goes here on the rail, just push it into place. And then we'll push the top one on this ball up here in the top. And after that, that's it for the installation. It wasn't too bad. We didn't have to make any modifications to the truck, didn't take me too long to do it all. Only needed a second set of hands one time so that's not too bad. Well, I think that does it. Thanks for hanging out and hope this helps..