etrailer Hard Tonneau Cover - Folding - Fiberglass Reinforced Plastic - Matte Black

Video Transcript for How to Install the etrailer Hard Folding Tonneau Cover on a 2025 Ram 1500

Hi, Matt with etrailer. If you have a 2025 Ram 1500 and you're just looking to get a little bit more security for the bed of your truck, either you're trying to protect your items from any elemental things like rain, snow, or ice, or you just want it to be a little bit more safe from anyone passing by, then the etrailer hard quad fold up tonneau cover is gonna be a great option for you. So let's check it out. So like I said, this is gonna be a hard tonneau cover and I really do like the look of it back here. Even this kind of textured finish we have kind of makes it a little bit more rugged, but I'm thinking it really fits our vehicle today. Now something to think about too is the extra security you're gonna get from this.

The reason why that gives you more security is because you're gonna have a locking tailgate so no one can come by and open this up. And even if they really did want to come over here, unlike with a soft tonneau cover, they can't cut into here. So this is gonna be a pretty rugged design, but let's kind of take a closer look at how this is gonna operate. So if I do go to open it up, we can find two locations. You only have to use one of 'em to really operate it.

You're gonna squeeze these two knobs together right here. Once you squeeze that together, you can just push up on it and this will lift up. Now this is gonna be a quad style, so it's gonna have four sections cut out. That makes it a little bit different from a tri style, which is gonna have three. What's nice about our quad though is it takes up less space in your bed.

Now that is something to think about with when you're investing in a tonneau cover. We'll also have these buckles that help secure it down. You're gonna have one per side. And what's nice about this one too, even though it does stick up a little bit above our bed, it's pretty much level with our seats back here, the head rest of our seats back here, so it's still hidden. But to give you a measurement real quick of how high this is gonna sit in this position, that's gonna be about four and a half inches, which isn't very high at all.

Now if we looked at how high just one layer would be, that's gonna be a little bit under an inch. So when this is fully extended out, that's how much space it's gonna take up. Now that's the space above our bed that it takes up. Let's see how much space we have beneath it. So if I measure from the bottom of our bed to the bottom of that tonneau cover, that's gonna be around 21 inches. So even if you did have a fifth wheel back here, it wouldn't get in the way of that. Now if you have any really tall items like a taller fridge, but you want it pushed all the way back here, this might get in the way some. Well, let's take a look at how much space for those taller items we do have. So if I measure underneath to the furthest point out that this tonneau cover sticks out, that's gonna be about 18 inches is taken from your bed. So like I said, if you have anything taller like a fridge, you will still have space back here. You just might not have as much space. But talk about that bed space too. Since we only have a five and a half foot bed in here, we don't have a whole lot of room to start with. So if you're really trying to maximize the amount of space in your bed, that's okay. We can still take this tonneau cover out and it's actually a really easy process. You're just gonna have four knobs that hold this in place. You won't need any tools to remove it. After when you loosen up those knobs, you can take it out and then you have that maximum bed space that you want. And talk about how things are held in place, we can check out these rails. Now these rails are actually pretty simple. They're just gonna have three clamps that grab onto 'em. And the only tool that you'll need for this is gonna be an included Allen key. So you're gonna have an included Allen key for that bolt and then you're gonna have just your hand for this hand knob on the bottom. And what's really nice about this is you don't have to make any modifications or drilling to your bed at all. And what I really like about these rails is a few things. So these are some pretty narrow, some smaller rails. So they're not gonna take up much space at all. They actually look very natural on our bed rails. That transition is almost seamless and this is very low profile so you don't have to deal with anything that's too bulky. Now if you look at the area right next to your tailgate, you'll see that we have our stake pocket completely open so you can still use that as well. And I know I've talked a lot about security and bed space, but like I was saying earlier, this is when we have to keep the elements out from the bed. You'll notice right here we have this rubber strip that's on the rail itself. This is very seamless so no water's gonna be able to get underneath that and to make sure no water gets in between your rail and your tonneau cover, we even have this additional coating right here. While this tonneau cover is very water resistant and I say water resistant because no tonneau cover is truly waterproof or weatherproof, they will give you some butyl tape that does come with this kit. And this is mainly for any types of gaps that you might find in your truck bed. So a lot of times you'll see some gaps in a lot of the corners. You can plug up those gaps with some of this butyl tape to kind of keep any of those larger spots from seeping through. Now there is one drawback to having a quad folding tonneau cover and that is because everything's compact and in the same location, as you can hear, this thing is pretty heavy. But what kind of lends to that heft is gonna be the stability of this. So this is gonna have a weight capacity of 200 pounds, but we have plenty of other options on our website for different styles. So a couple other ones would be a roll-up style. Now it's gonna take up a little bit less space, but depending on what type, whether it's hard or soft, it is gonna be the main factor in that. Now there is another option that actually won't stick up on top of your bed any and that's gonna be a canister style. Now there is a drawback to a canister style. While they do look very nice, it's actually gonna take up our space underneath it right here. Now talk about saving bed space. If you are looking for something that's not gonna block the space above your bed either, then there are some fold up options that fold up against the cab of your truck. Now there's a major drawback with that though, while it does save you a lot of bed space, it's gonna completely block the back of your window. And that's important because if you're trying to monitor what your gear or whatever you're hauling back here, you won't be able to do that as well. So that's part of the reason why I like this a little bit more. Now in my opinion, I think this is a really solid choice for a tonneau cover, especially if you're just looking for more of the bare bones type of tonneau cover that just is gonna give you that extra security and is gonna keep out a majority of the elements. But if you are curious to see what the installation of this looks like, just stay tuned and we'll walk you through it. To begin the installation, I like to lay everything out and put everything to the relative sides. You're gonna notice I already have my right side or your left side installed, it's gonna be the same process for both sides of these rails though. But what we're gonna have is gonna be the rails themselves. We're gonna have all the hardware that's gonna include some bolts, some knobs and some brackets. We'll go over a little bit more in depth later on about what specifically they are and then we're gonna have the tonneau cover itself. Also recommend grabbing a tape measure. Just make this process a bit easier. So we wanna put our rails on first and we wanna make sure we have the right one for the correct side in the right orientation. So this one right here is gonna be the one for the right side. So that's gonna be your passenger side and you wanna make sure it's facing in this way. So you have this bracket facing towards the inside, furthest away, closest to your cab. And this side with the weather stripping against your rails. You're just gonna pretty much push it against it until it's flush and then push it until that bracket makes contact near the bulkhead of your truck. Now we can install the brackets and the way you wanna do this is you wanna grab all your parts that you're gonna need. So we're gonna have the exterior part of your bracket, then we're gonna have the interior of your bracket. They're gonna kind of connect to each other like this. The way you can also tell they're in the correct orientation is if you have a hole on the bottom where you can thread this hand knob into. I like to just lightly thread that in just a bit so it can grab on at least. And this is what we're looking for. You're eventually are gonna put this bolt through here until it connects to the other side, but hold it on the rails. Let's see what that process looks like. When you're putting this on, you wanna make sure you have this section that has little cutouts on it. We want to line that up with a track that's on our rail and push it into place. Now we're gonna start on the tailgate side. You can start on the bulkhead side. This side is a little bit trickier. That's why I'd recommend starting on the bulkhead side but isn't gonna be the same process. And when you put that inside section or bracket in here, you wanna make sure there's nothing blocking it or impeding it from driving on there. Now this is gonna be a pretty tight fit. We're gonna make sure nothing's in my way. I think we're pretty good. And what like what I like to also do is grab that five millimeter Allen key to help hold it in place so we can tighten this down. I think it just helps out a bit. We just wanna tighten it on enough to really attach one another to each other. We don't want to have it tight, still pretty loose and wanna come underneath. Tighten up that hand knob just a little bit so we have just a little resistance. Come back up here, tighten this up a little bit more 'cause what we're really just looking for is like I said, a little resistance just in case we need to adjust the setting. And then I just repeated that same process for the second two brackets. And if you look at how I have 'em located, I'm basically just trying to get them as evenly distributed as I could. Now from this point, I'm just gonna grab this bracket. It's gonna come with your kit. We wanna make sure it's facing up like this, not downwards like this. So make sure it's facing up. And then it's just gonna slide into that track using the back half of it and you're just gonna put it in that opening nearest to your bulkhead and just move it over roughly a few inches. We can adjust it later on. And now we can grab our tonneau cover. This might be a bit easier if you got two people with you going on either side of your truck, but you can definitely still do it yourself too just by grabbing in the center. Now when you put this on, you wanna make sure that the front side has that weather strip on the bottom nearest to your bulkhead. Another way to check too is you'll notice we have those buckles up top. We want that closest to our bulkhead. When you do this, you just wanna try to make sure it's centered as possible. I'm just gonna lower this down now and let it rest. And if I need to make any adjustments, I can just go back through and pull on it a bit. Once you have this roughly where you want it to sit, then we can actively test if this is gonna be a good fit. So would you come to the backside, unbuckle it on both ends. Once that's free, then we can unfold this. Now, right now we do have this on here at the moment still, and something else I notice is what I'm doing is I'm usually trying to listen for any clicks. I didn't hear no clicks and that's because this isn't even on both sides. So I'm just gonna shift this over a bit. Now we went back through and adjusted everything and the main thing we did was tighten those clamps all the way down. And that kind of helps just not shift as much when we're closing it. So when I loaded this down, you can hear that click now. And something else too, to kinda let you know it's working is if you look at the location of the hooks, I can tell that they're even on both ends. So if they're in roughly the same placement, kind of oriented to your bed rails, then you know you're good. And then we'll close the last one. That's a good click. Make sure we can shut our tailgate too and we can. Now, if you can't shut your tailgate, it's probably pulled too forward. So what you have to do is just push it back just a little bit, then try again. Now we're gonna secure this tonneau cover into this location. Now to do that, you're just gonna come over here underneath the tonneau cover and you're just gonna pull out this T bolt. And what we're trying to do with that T bolt is get it into this bracket. Now you're also gonna need this spacer that's gonna go underneath too. So that's gonna go through that bolt if I can get that in place. And what you're gonna have to do is lift up on the tonneau cover itself. And honestly this is probably gonna be easier if you have the tonneau cover fully extended out just so you can lift this back end a bit easier. And I'm gonna try to lift it up just from this side. I'll show you what I mean. And now I'm gonna lower it back down into that same location. Before you grab the other hardware, which is gonna be this hand knob, a wing nut, and a end cap, I recommend putting on the other side because once you have this cinched down, you won't be able to lift it up again. But basically when you do this, you're just gonna put that hand knob on first 'til this is on there pretty tight. Then you'll go in with the wing nut, put pressure against it. This one I find to be a little bit more tricky. The threads are a little bit harder to get on, but once you have that wing nut on there all the way, I'll just put it on there partially since I still need to put it on my other side. Then we're gonna grab that end cap and put it at the very end of there. And something that we found too is that this weather strip on the back folded in on itself while we we inchesre trying to adjust them both. Now if you are having that issue too, I'd recommend holding off before you put on the hand knobs, but pull this out, still having that spacer and that bolt through that bracket because if you have to, once you have to lift this up, this is just automatically gonna curl in on itself. So once you have this all the way out, then you could put on those hand knobs and tighten this down into place. Now we're gonna go back to that second bracket that we actually installed on here. That one right there. And we're gonna line this up with this bracket underneath the tonneau cover once we have it pretty much lined up. A good way to test it is just grab this hand knob and see if it's gonna run up through there. And if it will, then we're gonna grab our smallest Allen Key. You'll find a set screw on the front of it that will tighten down to keep this in place so it's not shifting. Once you have that tightened down all the way, go and grab that hand knob and run it up through there. You wanna get this tightened down completely. You'll notice this tightened down all the way once that bracket becomes flush with your tonneau cover. Now we're just gonna give this one last test to make sure nothing's shifted and it's all working properly. So we're making sure it's latching, we're not having any issues moving it. And then we also wanna make sure that we can shut our tailgate. And we're looking pretty good here. So that was just do it for our look at the installation and some of the features of the etrailer quad fold tonneau cover on the back of our 2025 Ram 1500. I'm Matt, thanks for watching.