Justin: If you're looking for some sleek and durable protection for the hood
of that 2015 through 2020 F-150 for south of 100 bucks, well, then you might want
to consider the RedRock Smoked option that we have here today. Now, the RedRock will
combine an injection-molded acrylic build along with that dark smoked appearance,
all for right around 80 bucks. Installation on the other hand will not involve any drilling or
permanent modification. So, therefore, the site is going to stick to a one out of three wrench
rating, and call this about an hour or so to complete from start to finish. But as always,
guys, hang with me for a bit, and we'll walk you through that job later in the video.
So, the purpose of any wind deflector, rock deflector, or whatever the brand you go with
is pretty simple, reduce, and hopefully eliminate any unsightly paint chips
caused by stones or other debris you might encounter on the road. Now, the reality is,
you guys should know the deal here, right? You spend a good amount of time on the highway,
your hood, fenders, and even your windshield will inevitably get a little bit beat up from
any tiny stones getting kicked up by other trucks or cars in front of you. Now, with that said,
there are a couple of different ways to help combat this. You can either go
with a full-blown vinyl bra, which isn't always the most visually appealing.
You can always check out a clear bra option, but they can be a bit pricey. Or finally, can check
out something like this, a wind or rock deflector, which will be an affordable, low-profile way to
help prevent some of these stone or rock chips on the front end of your F-150.
But going back to that low-profile aspect I just mentioned, I really like how the RedRock
option does conform to the factory hood on the '15 through '20 trucks. Hugs it very well.
And it just looks great once installed. Now, this is certainly
a far cry from the wind deflectors of 20, 30 years ago, which basically included
a 6-inch piece of plastic sticking straight up off the front end, which might've been effective,
but certainly didn't do you any favors in regards to appearance. Not the case here. Again,
once installed, looks like it was custom-tailored for the front end, because, let's face it, it was.
Materials will be pretty standard across the board for deflectors in general. And that
typically includes some sort of injection-molded acrylic, which is the case here, very durable,
and that has been finished off in a very dark smoked appearance that's going to look great,
very stealthy on some of the darker-colored trucks, but should look good no matter what color
truck you have. But now, as promised earlier, guys, we do want to get into the installation,
show you a little bit more about how to get this on the front end of that F-150 at home.
So, without further ado, check out our detailed walkthrough and tool breakdown right now.
Man: Tools used for this install are: a Phillips head screwdriver
and a clip removal tool. So, even though this install's going to take place under the hood of
our truck, I'm actually going to start here on the table and install the supplied clips to the
end of the bug deflector before I put it on. So, all I need is a Phillips head screwdriver and the
supplied hardware, and these will just go right on. So, you're going to take the supplied clip and
the screw with the washer, and install it into the screw holes at the end of the bug deflector, and
then you can take your Phillips head screwdriver and tighten those down.
You want to put the clip on the inside of the deflector, with the screw on the outside.
And then you can just repeat this on the other side.
Now we're ready to move underneath the hood. So, the next thing we need to do is remove four of
the clips in the weatherstripping on the underside of the hood. You don't have to remove all of them,
just the four that I have marked here with the yellow paint. It's just these four here. Skip the
one in the middle, skip out to the one on either side of that, and then skip one again, and you
have to just remove these four. So, I'll take my clip tool, get it underneath my weatherstripping,
and pop those clips out. And these are going to be replaced with the clips provided in the kit.
The last thing I need to do before I can install the bug deflector to the hood is actually prep it
for a little small vinyl application that goes right here on the edge of the hood,
right by this indentation right here on the edge. And that's going to protect the paint
from the metal clip that we installed earlier. So, I'll take the supplied prep pad,
make sure the surface is nice and clean, and then I can install the supplied vinyl strip.
I'll do this on both sides. Now that my surface is clean and dry, I can peel
the vinyl strip off of the 3M backing, and I can install it right over the edge of my hood.
And I can just roll that over the front edge. I'll do this on both
sides, and this is just going to protect the paint from that clip.
Now I'm ready to install my deflector. And what I'm going to do is line up these four
tabs with the holes from the pins that I removed, and I'm going to slide them in
between the weatherstripping and the hood. Now I can slide my metal clips
onto those vinyl tabs that I installed. So, in order to get these pin holes lined up,
I grabbed an extra set of hands just to hold things in place while I put my pins in. And
once you have them all situated, just screw them into place, and your bug deflector is good to go.
And that's gonna wrap up this review and install of the RedRock 4X4 Smoked
Bug Hood Deflector for your 2015 to 2020 F-150.
Thanks for watching. And for all things F-150, keep it right here at americantrucks.com.