Hey, guys.
I'm Eric with American Trucks.
In this video, we're gonna give you a review and install of this Rough Country Low Profile
Hard Tri-Fold Tonneau Cover fitting all 2017 and later F-250 and F-350 pickup trucks with
the six and three-quarter-foot bed.
This tonneau cover from Rough Country is really ideal for the pickup truck owner out there
who routinely carries cargo in the bed of their truck and they need not only protection
from the weather but also a measure of security as well.
Now this unit from Rough Country is one of the more affordable hard tri-fold tonneau
covers on the market today.
If you wanna save more money, you're pretty much gonna be stuck at looking at soft rollup
covers or the soft tri-fold covers but the problem with those units is you're gonna lose
that anti-theft qualities that you get with this unit.
Those anti-theft qualities include the durable aluminum panels and the locking latches that
secure the third and middle panels on this cover which means basically if your tailgate
is closed and locked and your tonneau cover is closed and latched, no thieves can open
this so long as your truck is locked.
All right, guys.
Just to give you a quick demonstration of how this works, one nice thing I like about
this is if your tailgate is locked, you can't get this tonneau opened.
So that's gonna give you a nice measure of security.
But go ahead and unlock your tailgate.
Once you have it dropped down, you have latches here at the back and on the middle panel.
Pull on the cord and flip it forward.
And if that's all you need open, it'll stay like that.
These latches in the middle panel here will keep it closed.
But go ahead and pull on this cord.
Fold it forward.
Once you have your cover folded forward, what's nice is you have these clips right here and
they're kept secure in this little clip right there so they're not flapping around in the
wind.
Take it out of there and buckle it in here and that'll keep this locked down.
You can also adjust that buckle if it's too loose like this.
Just go ahead and tighten this down and that'll keep it nice and snug and you have a buckle
just like this on the passenger side as well.
Then to close it, simply release the latch here and then secure it in the buckle right
there.
Go ahead and fold it closed.
Now this cover's really ideal for the pickup truck owner who routinely carries cargo that
basically fits underneath it when it's fully closed.
However, if you occasionally carry cargo that's kind of odd-sized or oversized and it's gonna
come up above the top line of the side of your bed here, you can fold this cover one
panel open and it'll latch in place just like that.
If you need more room, you can fold both the rear and middle panels forward and latch them
down and it'll stay secure in place like that.
And occasionally, if you need full access to your bed, all you need to do is remove
four clamps on the front panel and remove the entire unit away.
Now while these aluminum panels are very durable, they're also lightweight making the occasional
removal of the entire unit no big deal.
Now talking a little more specifically about price, this unit currently comes in right
around $750.
That's one of the more affordable units out there with this type of design.
If you want similar security features with the hardcover, you're gonna be looking at
other covers of this design that usually come in couple of hundred dollars more or the rollup
covers that come in several hundred dollars more, or if you're gonna go full-blown fiberglass
topper, you're talking about thousands of dollars.
So really, the sweet spot for this kit is its price in my opinion.
Now as far as the installation goes, guys, a couple of hand tools are all you're gonna
need to get this job done in about 30 minutes or less.
So, I'm giving this a very basic one out of three wrenches on our difficulty meter.
Pretty much a simple installation and we're gonna walk you through it here in just a second.
So, let's go ahead and take a look at a couple of tools you're gonna need and go ahead with
that installation.
All right, guys.
The only tools we're gonna need for this install are a socket wrench and a half-inch socket.
All right, guys.
Now to get started with the installation, we're gonna grab the rails out of the kit,
and one on each side, we're gonna line them up.
And we also have a total of six clamps, three on each side.
Once we have our rail lined up, we'll put the clamps in place, snug them up a little
bit.
Don't tighten them all the way down just yet so we have a little play in the system here
so when we lay our tri-fold cover on, we'll be able to get everything lined up just right.
So, let's go ahead and get started.
All right, guys.
Now we have this kinda snugged up finger tight for right now.
You don't wanna overtighten this just so we make sure we have proper alignment.
If you wanna give it a turn or two with the wrench, go ahead and use a half-inch socket
on here.
Not too tight right now.
All right, guys.
Now we're gonna go ahead and put our middle clamp on here.
Along the top of the rail here, you're gonna see the word clamp and that's gonna tell you
exactly where to place your clamp and you're gonna place it over the top of these little
rubber bumpers right here.
And these kinda slide in the tracks there and they should line up with the word clamp.
So, if you need to kinda push that down just like that to line it up, go ahead and do that.
But go ahead and put your next clamp on.
[inaudible 00:06:17] a third clamp in here.
Then go ahead and repeat this procedure on the passenger side.
All right.
At this stage, we're ready to set our cover into place.
I'm gonna have a friend help me kinda set it up there.
It's not overly heavy.
It's just kinda large and unwieldly.
It's a little bit easier if you have a friend here to just kinda lift it in place and set
it up there.
Once we have it kinda positioned, then we're gonna have two clamps per side that are gonna
secure the front panel to the rails.
All right, guys.
Now we're up here up against the bulkhead of the bed of our truck.
Right here, you have these drain tubes.
You've got one on each side and you have these corrugated bits of tubing that came in the
kit.
Just go ahead and secure that up on there.
And then you can run it down if you have a bed line like we do here.
We have a rubber cover that covers the hole right here.
You can run it down through here.
You can cut a hole in this and run your drain tube out to somewhere so that you can get
water out of here and it's not gonna collect inside of the bed of your truck.
Now this isn't a permanent installation on our fleet vehicle here, so I'm not gonna cut
any holes in here but I did wanna demonstrate how to get the drain plug installed.
And of course, you have one on the passenger side as well.
Go ahead and fit that one on as well.
All right, guys.
Now to use these brackets here, you kinda have the top hat bolt right here.
That's actually gonna slide up in here like this and sort of hang like that.
And then slide this bracket all the way over into the little lip.
It kinda grabs on to the rail, the underside of the rail here.
So, once you have that slid all the way over, you can go ahead and just tighten that up.
And that'll hold the front panel of your tonneau cover down.
We have another one back here.
Then do the same thing on the other side.
All right.
Now go ahead and check the fitment with your cover.
Fold it out to make sure that it fits snuggly down in between the rails there.
As long as you have good fitment, go ahead and tighten these down with your half-inch
socket.
All right, guys.
And repeat that on the other side.
All right, guys.
Now with the clamps all tightened down, go ahead and fold it closed.
All right, guys.
With everything clamped down and latched down, go ahead and close your tailgate.
That wraps up this review and install of this Rough Country Low Profile Hard Tri-Fold Tonneau
Cover fitting all 2017 and later F-250 and F-350s with the six and three-quarter-foot
bed.
For all things SuperDuty, keep it right here at americantrucks.com.