WildTop Beast Soft Truck Topper with Ladder Rack- Solid Side Panels - Black

Video Transcript for WildTop Beast Soft Truck Topper In-Depth Review and Installation

Hi, I'm Matt with etrailer. Today, we're gonna be talking about the WildTop Beast topper. Now, this is gonna be a great option for you. If you're looking for that nice, soft topper look on the back of your truck to keep your gear nice and dry, but you also want that ladder rack to be compatible with it, which is really rare, this is gonna be the one for you. Now, I think this is gonna be the perfect accessory for anyone who does a lot of camping. If you want to throw a lot of your larger gear in the back of your bed and have something a little bit taller, compared to whether if you had a tonneau cover, this will give you more space to work with.

And if you wanna put a rooftop tent on here, you'll have the space to do so. You'll pretty much have all your camping needs right on your truck, and that's actually what the owner of this truck is planning on doing. Now, when it comes to actually using it, it's pretty easy to do. I can open up my tailgate even with this down, no problem. And we're gonna have these zippers (zippers ripping) that allow us to open up the sides and it will open up on all four.

I will say sometimes when you are unzipping it, there'll be these little flaps on the inside. (zippers ripping) You need to watch out for them. What those flaps are designed to do is prevent water from seeping through the zippers. And they actually do a really good job at preventing water from getting in. Tricky thing is sometimes just getting out of the way, but this is still pretty new so it still needs to learn to shape a bit more.

(zippers ripping) Just like that. I can roll this up. What I find cool about this, it rolls up no problem, and we're gonna have these straps that sit on the inside. They're gonna have magnets built into them that hold this into place. So I don't have to worry about any type of grommet or trying to make some certain type of connection.

I just put it near the area and it holds it down. I can put up the other two sides. (cover rustling) And with these other sides, you'll also have the optional mounting point. That's gonna be a hook and loop here that keeps this flap down. And what I like about this is, for the Maverick at least, it gives us this really nice contour with the rubber molding we have here. So it looks very natural, like it's a custom fit, which it is. (zippers ripping) (cover scraping) We'll just roll that up. And now you got a lot more airflow. So if you need something to kind of air out or if you want to hang out back here as you're moving your gear, you have the room to do so. Or if you need to grab anything from the sides, that'd be a lot harder to grab from your tailgate side, you also have that option. Like I said, you can put up all four sides. So I'm not gonna be doing that because it can be pretty tough to get this back tucked in here. The basic concept is you'd remove this hook and loop on here on the side. (flaps ripping) Just like that. Unzip it. And you see this flap is free now. We can put that up and we're gonna have those straps to hold it into place. Again, I'm just gonna keep this down, 'cause that's one thing. It can be a little bit tricky to get this molded back into place. Let's focus on the ladder rack part of this now. And what's nice about this is this is just gonna be integrated to the very top of the actual topper, which makes it really easy to work with because some of the other ones I've seen out there are right next to it and it can kind of be hard to attach things or mess with the topper itself. What's really nice about this though is I think this is gonna be perfect for, again, anyone who's doing a lot of camping 'cause you can put your longer accessories up top, anything like your skis, kayaks, bikes. Anything of that nature, I think, would be a great spot up here. Or like I was talking about earlier, you can put that tent, which typically takes up a lot of space. And if you pair that up with an awning, you can mount that here to the side since we are gonna have these channels that run on the side, top, inside, and underneath. So you have a lot of different spots for mounting accessories. Or you can just go on with a clamp-on method with this too. So essentially, you could have a little sleeping quarters up top, have your storage of your items inside the bed, and then have that awning here on the side where you can kind of hang out outside under the shade. Since we not only have the bars that go across on the front, but also on the sides, so that gives you more options if you wanna mount other accessories, not just that awning, but if you want to put a light bar in the back too, you can do that. Now let's get a couple measurements of how it's sitting back here. And right now it looks really good to me, but the total height of how this topper is sitting on here is gonna be around 16 inches, which is almost gonna be the exact height of our cab. So again, looks really nice on here. But for the total height with that crossbar or that ladder rack, that's almost gonna be 20 inches now. So there's a few things we need to take into account for that. One, if you're going through any low clearance areas, make sure you take the total height of everything back here plus your accessories so you know you're gonna make it or not. But we also want to make sure if we have anything longer or that extends out past, kind of over your cab a bit, we wanna make sure that our antenna's not gonna interfere with that. So definitely keep that in mind. And then for the space underneath here, that's gonna be a little bit under two and a half inches. So why that's important is if you have any extra large clamps that wrap around here, they should fit just fine. They might be a little bit tight to work with in some spots, but it is something to keep in mind. Let's talk about how this is going to attach to your truck. So the way this is gonna do is it's gonna have four clamps and what's really nice about this is we won't have to make any modifications to our truck. There's gonna be no drilling, anything like that. You're just gonna clamp on there. There's gonna be four of these and these clamps are really easy to work with. They're not gonna be some type of clamp that's gonna have a bunch of settings to it. They just line up to their slots, grab onto that ladder rack and that topper, and pull it down to your bed rails on all four corners. Now let's talk about what it's gonna be like to see through these windows that we have on our topper. Now that's gonna be pretty clear as you can see right now. I do have those side windows open. So if you need to back up anywhere, you'll be able to see what you need to. And if you need to check what's in the back of your bed, you can also do that. I was a little bit worried about that at first, because when I came over here and tried to look in from the outside, since these windows are tinted, it's really hard to see in here, especially with these reflections, but I really don't have that issue when I'm inside the truck. This is gonna have a dynamic weight capacity of 330 pounds. So what that really means is when you have this loaded up with, let's say some heavier things like a tent, you have an awning, couple lights on here, all that typically is gonna stay within the capacity of when you're driving around. Now the static capacity is gonna be 1,500 pounds. So even if you are a larger person and you're with someone else up here, that's gonna be plenty of weight for this actually support. Bro, I think this is gonna be the perfect option for anyone who plans on doing a lot of camping, you want to rig it out with a lot of other accessories for your sleeping quarters, awnings, anything like that, perfect. Now, if you want something that's gonna be a little bit different, 'cause we do have one other option here at etrailer, this is gonna be the Fas-Top with Jaybar. And that's gonna have the ability to collapse down for the topper when you're not using it. So if you want a little bit more space back here, you can go with that. I will say it's gonna have more straps to it, so I think this is gonna look a little bit nicer, and it's also gonna have a higher weight capacity. If you guys feel pretty comfortable with the installation, I think most people can do it. I will say it just takes a little bit of time since it has a lot of parts and pieces. But if you don't have a whole day to set aside to actually install this, then I'd recommend checking out our dealer locator to help find someone who can install it for you. And if you guys do decide to go with this, let me know how it's working for you in either a comment or review, and how you're really pairing up and what kind of gear you're putting on top of it. But with that said, I can actually show you how to install it now so you can decide if you want to handle this or not. So once you have this mostly assembled, make sure you grab a friend. I got Evan here with me today to make this a little bit easier. We also want to make sure this is in the right orientation. So we're gonna have this bar on the bottom. This is gonna go on your bulkhead side, so recommend putting it like this first. Then we can lift it up by the sides, bring it over to your bed, and we're gonna put it as close to the bulkhead as possible, making sure it's even. It doesn't have to be perfect at the very beginning, but my goal here is pretty much to line up this bar with that bulkhead. I like to make sure it's squared off and it's actually really easy to do. What you got to do is make sure it is lined up and flush with that bulkhead up there. And I'll also check the sides. It should be almost seamless right here. So make sure both sides feel the same. And if they do, we can move over to these clamps. Now these clamps are gonna be screwed together in most cases. So break it loose with the Allen key, unthread it all the way, and actually really easy to work with. So there's just gonna be two pieces. One goes on top. I'll take that piece off now. It's gonna wrap completely across this bar here. And I recommend keeping this as close to the bracket as possible. It's just gonna make it more sturdy. And when we put it on here, this side with that lip there, that's gonna go underneath your bed rail. It should line up just like this. Once you feel pressure with that bottom side of the bracket or clamp, then we'll try to thread this back together. Now, if you feel something is blocking you away from getting a good fit, it feels extra low, or it's not feeling flush, then I would make sure you find a different spot to mount this to. But in a lot of cases, you can get this almost right next to that bracket there or that corner. So I'll get it hand tight. Once that feels pretty good, grab an Allen key and then I'll tighten it down the rest of the way. Then you can do that same process for the rest of them, on all four corners. With all four of those clamps tighten down, this would be a good point to go back and double check all the hardware that was put together during the assembly. Make sure that's nice and tight, and then we can move over to the canvas. Now the canvas, the first thing I like to do is just kind of lay it out. Make sure we have everything in the right orientation. And what I mean by that is you're gonna have the front and the back side. And the backside, the tailgate side, is gonna have these logos on it on there. You can see we have Beast here. We have WildTop here. The other side is not gonna have that. And this is gonna be a good point to also undo your zippers (zippers ripping) 'cause this is gonna make it a lot easier to put on top of the topper. And we can do that now. The way I like to do this is just start from the back and work our way forward. It doesn't have to be pretty at the beginning. A couple things that might help you out, if you have a friend to help you kinda flatten this out, that'll go a long way. And a step ladder or just a regular ladder will help out too. But what I'm mainly trying to do is match up the corners so it lines up. There's gonna be a lot of back and forth. There will be a couple of good indicators to kind of follow up on, make sure it is matching up. One of those is gonna be on the very top. You're gonna notice you got this tiny hole here, might be a little bit hard to see. You're gonna have each one of those in each corner and that's gonna match up with a hole in the rack. There you go. I like the way this is fitting on at the moment. What I did was lift up the side so I can see a little bit more what I'm doing in here. And I'm gonna come over to this front bar here on the bottom and I'm just gonna wipe this down (wipes swishing) with one of these alcohol wipes. Once that feels pretty good, I'm gonna let it dry. Shouldn't take too long. Maybe like 15, 30 seconds. We do have another one of these, so if one doesn't feel like enough for you, you do have that other one. Now that's right, I'm gonna make sure I have both strips of my hook and loop. You are gonna have two locations where you place this. So we do have the top of the bar, which I wiped down, and the front of it. So I'm gonna start by putting this on the front of it. There's gonna be an adhesive side to this protected by that plastic backing. So I'm gonna start all the way from one side just by peeling this just a little bit to begin with. Then placing it on there. And just play a little bit of force behind there. (strips crackling) And we're just gonna be walking this down. (strips crackling) When you're doing this, you can either try to place it in the center or a little bit higher up. I wouldn't recommend placing it too far low just 'cause the way this hook and loop is designed. I also recommend having some scissors on hand 'cause once we get to the very end of this, we're gonna to have a little bit of excess that we're gonna cut off. Front side's done now. I'm gonna do the same thing for the very top. Similar concept, peel that back. Try to get as far over to the side as possible. Even if you don't think you'll be able to get that hook and loop over in that tight spot, that's fine. We are gonna have a little bit of excess, so might as well use it. (strips crackling) And similar concept, try to keep it in the center as much as possible. (strips crackling) With these on, I'm gonna come over here. I've already started that process now, but we're gonna connect our hook and loops together just like this. The way I'll recommend doing it is try to put on a decent amount of pressure to the very top of here so you get as flat of a connection as possible and pull it down nice and snug there. It's gonna be a similar process with this flap here on the side. Press that down. And if it's kind of hard getting that one into place, you're gonna have a zipper here. It's gonna have this little grab on point to grab to. Pull that down. That should really snug everything up nice and tight. I might kind of push that forward some. There you go, that feels good. And then you can kind of readjust, see how everything fits. But honestly, this is probably one of the harder parts. And if you get this done, the rest of it will be pretty smooth sailing. We're gonna have some tension rods and where we're gonna put this is on all three sides: on driver's side, passenger side, and tailgate side. If we peel this back some, we're gonna see this little slot here. And that's where that tension rod is gonna slide into. I'm gonna have to wiggle it around a little bit and pull that up a bit. Here we have it. Push this through. (rod scraping) And we're gonna repeat that process on the other two sides. (rod scraping) (rod scraping) (rod scraping) Come over to the magnetic straps now. So what I'm gonna do here is lift this up so it's out of our way. And you're gonna do this on all sides. And basically, the way these straps work is we're gonna to connect our grommet underneath here. And when we go to put up these flaps, this is gonna connect together and that magnet is gonna connect to one another and hold it in place. So the best way I find to find the grommets, 'cause they should be facing the inside, is you spot the one from the other side, kind of follow where it would be on this side and click it into place. (magnet clicks) Just like that. And the way that should look underneath here is once that's connected in, that should be folded like that. Once it's folded like that, it'll lift up. And make sure it connects together. (magnet clicks) Just like that. Not super pretty right now. Once you roll it up, it'll look much better, but I'm gonna repeat the same process on all the sides. Come over here to the zippers, and I'm gonna pull these down. (zipper ripping) Right now, that's feeling pretty good. When you get to the second one, that's where it might get a little bit tight, especially when you're in your last corner like me. And this is just letting us adjust things to make sure everything's fitting on here properly. And how we can double check that is when we come up here, I can kind of see where that hole is and this is just barely free of being cleared. So I know I'm good here. And I'm just gonna check each one of these corners and make sure they feel pretty flat on top and that they're not being obstructed. Like this one here is bubbling up just a little bit, so I might make some adjustments here in the front, trying to pull down those flaps a little bit tighter and try to make sure our hook and loop is making full contact. Another thing to do, once we have this at a really good point where we like everything how it's sitting, we can come over here with these little stickers we got. They're gonna be in the shape of disc. We're gonna remove those. And see where the zipper is This is just gonna be a protective coating that's gonna sit on your truck. Make sure that is as flush as possible. It's gonna be nice and clear, so it'll be really hard to notice. And that's just designed so we don't scuff anything up. So go to any point that you think this is gonna be making contact with your truck and just cover that up. And another little thing you can do is come over here. You're gonna notice we have some stitching here. There's gonna be a little hook and loop strap. And what I'm gonna do is grab some of that excess that we have. We should have plenty. And I'm just gonna pull that over and I'm gonna attach them now. And what I'd recommend is leaving maybe like a half inch of extra on either side and try to get that centered up as much as possible. There you go. Once you have that on there, then we're just gonna make sure it's in place. And I'm gonna grab a pair of scissors. I'm gonna cut this off. Then I'm gonna peel off that back. And when I pull down here, I'm gonna make sure pull it fairly tight, hold it there for a few seconds, and I'm gonna repeat that same process on the other side. Moving over to the ladder rack now is gonna come with a couple pieces. We're gonna have these corner pieces and it actually recommends that you start in the front driver's side corner and we're gonna work our way all the way across. But how to put on this corner piece is basically we're gonna have these rubber square washers. They're gonna have this type of tread on the front of it, and that's gonna be the side that faces up. And we're going over to this corner where that hole is. That's why we wanted to make sure that hole wasn't covered up earlier. And then we're gonna grab this long bolt and it's gonna have this fabric washer. We're then gonna put those on, sliding it through. You might have to pick this up some so you can see what you're doing. Now go to the other side. Then you're gonna grab this nut and you'll hold this in place as you hand thread it into place. When you're doing this, something you're gonna find is this will be pretty tight underneath there, trying to get that nut into place. So it's better to kind of find out where that bolt is coming through from, press the nut against there, and then we're gonna thread it on from the bolt side just like this. It should grab on, and once it is on and connected, then we'll grab our wrenches and tighten them down the rest of the way. Now, if you have a socket and a wrench, that might be a little bit better for underneath. If you have a deep little socket, that'll probably help you out a bit more. (metal clanking) And I wouldn't recommend tightening it down all the way. Just enough to make sure it's snug and it's not gonna rattle around on you. And then we can connect the next piece. Grab the shorter bar of the two that you have left, or the two styles that you have left. And we're gonna just line that up, the contours of the shape we have over there. It's gonna be a little bit easier if you just do it from that side, but I wanted to show you how we're gonna connect the next piece. That's gonna be the other corner on our front passenger side. It's gonna work the same way as earlier. I'm actually remove that bolt real quick. Press these in together. Just like that. Make sure that washer's underneath there. Push the bolt fabric washer on there. And then same thing as we do in the other corner, tighten it down from the bottom. And then we'll grab our longer bar. And it's gonna connect just like this. And same process with this corner and so on. And when you're moving on to this last corner here and you got this last bar, I'd wait to push this one all the way through. Instead, we're gonna lift up a bit, push it on from this side, just to get it lined up. There we go. Push it into place like this. There we go. I know everything's connecting. Make sure that bolt goes right into that hole. We're good to go. And then I can put the nut underneath it now. And grab our smaller hardware. That's gonna be that bolt. There's washer. There's gonna be a little hole on the side by that corner. We're just gonna hand thread that on. Just like that. You'll notice there's another one right next to my hand. This gonna be two per corner. And once we have all those in place, then we can get to fully tightening this down. The way I'd recommend doing that is doing it corner by corner. So if you do, let's say your rear driver's side, then we'd go over to our front passenger side and then go to the front driver's side and then over to this corner right here until it's fully tightened down. So now that this is all tightened down and give it a good shake test, make sure it feels nice and good, and that'll pretty much do it for our installation. I'm Matt, and thanks for watching.