Pace Edwards Switchblade Retractable Hard Tonneau Cover - Aluminum and Vinyl - Black

Video Transcript for Setting up the Pace Edwards Switchblade Retractable Hard Tonneau Cover on a 2022 Chevrolet Colorado

Hi, everyone, Aiden here with etrailer. Today, we're gonna be taking a look at and showing you how to install this Pace Edwards Switchblade Retractable Hard Tonneau Cover on our 2022 Chevrolet Colorado. Now a tonneau cover offers a lot of different benefits. I think it gives a much cleaner look to the truck, but functionally it's going to help with a couple things. It's gonna make this a little bit more aerodynamic and help with fuel economy, because we're not creating this large pocket on our tailgate where wind gets caught and creates drag, it'll just go over the top, and we're gonna keep prying eyes away from our stuff. What's inside here in conjunction with the locking tailgate is going to be outta sight, outta mind.

And with this being a hard cover, it's going to offer better security. Because even if someone were to take a knife to the vinyl top here, they're not gonna cut through those aluminum panels that it's bonded to underneath. Obviously, nothing is thief proof, but a hard cover like this offers the maximum security compared to a soft cover or no cover at all. Now as far as the styles of tonneau cover go, this is a canister style. And, for me, canister is one of my favorites.

There's gonna be two levers at the very end that you pinch together to release this, and everything just retracts to a canister at the front of the bed. Now, for me, this offers a lot of different benefits. It's a very clean, above-the-rails look. You'll see a lot of tri-fold covers or even some of the rolling covers that will roll into a large mass at the front, partially blocking your back window. Or with those tri-fold style, the panels will kind of block a third of your bed.

Or if you've got it fully open, it's gonna completely block that back window. So, for this, you're not blocking any of the back window. You get maximum visibility out of there and it doesn't take up too much room from the bulkhead out into the truck. One downside is it does take up room inside the bed, because that canister does have to go down into the bed, but it doesn't go all the way to the bottom. So if you did have some pieces of lumber kind of wedged underneath it, there's plenty of room under there to fit stuff, so we're not completely sacrificing that space.

And even comparing this to other canister style covers, Retrax is another brand that a lot of people like for retractable covers, and I, myself, like them as well. I think they make a pretty solid cover. But this one I think is easier to operate. Things just move smoother. Those pinch levers at the very end whenever you release those, this just goes back on its own. I don't have to push it, I don't have to walk it back. And with the included pull cord, I don't have to walk up to it to close it. I can operate everything from opening to closing right here at the tailgate. Now one downside of this compared to Retrax though, is that there's only fully open and fully closed. With the Retrax covers, you can stop those at any point along. So if you wanted to have it partially open, maybe we've got some lumber or ladders that will partially extend beyond the tailgate and we wanna have the cover mostly closed for those fuel economy benefits, we can do that, but not with this one. As far as weather resistance goes, I think this does a pretty good job. Maybe not the best fit for the Colorado, and I'll show you why in a bit. But up front, we've got really nice weather sealing all around the canister and the side rails, and attached to the bottom of the canister are drain tubes. So if water does collect in there, it'll drain out to the outside of the truck bed. You'll need to drill out those holes during the install process, but it's pretty straightforward. If we move our way to the tailgate, that's where we start to see one of the flaws I think. There's this large rubber strip that makes contact with the tailgate and it does a good job, but it doesn't extend all the way to the corners. And on our Colorado, there's a sizeable gap right there. If you we're to scoot everything back, then you'd be sacrificing the seal and the fit at the front of the truck. So I would say that the very back end here, you might have some water intrusion at the corners and there's really not anything you can do about that because of that gap and the way it fits. I don't think it's that big of a deal, because if you have all your valuables up towards the front, it should be pretty well protected, but it's something to keep in mind. But speaking of that installation process, I know I mentioned some drilling, but it's gonna be very minor. And depending on how your truck is set up, you might even have some factory holes there just depending on the options you chose, which make it even easier. Our truck today didn't, but we'll walk you through that process of what the drain tubes look like whenever you get them installed and what the rest of the installation looks like, which is very straightforward. So follow along and we'll show you how we got it done. First thing we need to do for our installation is clean off the bulkhead of our truck, spraying it down and wiping it clean and dry will do the trick. We just want this surface to be nice and clean so that we can adhere a seal to it. Now, depending on your truck bed, if you've got a spray-in liner or a drop-in plastic bed liner, the seal might not work as well. The adhesion definitely works better on just the bare metal like you see here. So keep that in mind. But the weight of the canister pressing down over top of it will help hold it in place once you have it installed. You just might need to take some extra care during that installation process to make sure that this doesn't come up. But for us today, this will do just fine. And I'm gonna put this towards the inside edge of the bulkhead, try to get it all the way up to the side, and evenly press it down going from one side to the other, and trimming off any excess if we need to. With the seal in place of the bulkhead, we can turn our attention to the canister and remove this protective tape that comes in shipping from around either side. Now be careful when you get to the seal underneath, it might take a little bit of that seal with it. But just try to get it removed as cleanly as possible all the way around, and then you can lift the canister into position. Now you can get an extra set of hands to help you out with this. But depending on your wingspan, it's not too heavy, so lifting it by yourself should be totally possible. And you just set it in place at the very front, pressing it against the bulkhead. With the canister loosely in place, we went ahead and tried to center it as best we could, but it doesn't need to be exact right now. We can turn our attention to the side rails. These are side specific, flipping it underneath we'll see a long white strip, that's just a protective piece of paper that's going to cover up the weather seal. The weather seals will actually sit on the bed rail, so we can kind of determine our orientation by that. But we can also look at the ends. One end is going to be covered with this small spacer, that's the tailgate end. And we've also got a sticker that says right, that's going to be for the passenger side. And one thing I wanna point out at the front end of the truck is there's a threaded hole, that's going to be the hole that we use to attach the rail to the canister, and we'll see that in just a second. But for now, take this, slide it up towards the canister, and it could help to have an extra set of hands here, and get it lined up at the front. And at the canister we can notice a small, slotted hole, that's going to line up with the threaded hole we saw earlier on the side rail. So just take the cover, get it lined up, and slide it into the rail. And underneath, we're going to attach a bolt with a lock washer and a flat washer. I'm gonna have to hop into the bed for this to see it, and we're probably not gonna be able to show it super well on camera 'cause it is hard to see. But this will just go up through that slotted hole into the threaded one. Here's where that slotted hole will be. We've got everything lined up. You might need a flashlight to make sure it's lined up, but you'll feel it catch when it threads in, and use an 11-millimeter socket to tighten this down on both sides. (socket clicking) We need to make sure that the side rails are secured now so we can clamp them in. The clamps consist of two main pieces here, the part that slides into the side rail and the part that will go on the underside of your truck's bed rail. These two pieces will join together like this, and have a hand knob with a block on the other side that tightens it up together. If you turn your attention to the side rails of your cover, there's going to be these silver brackets here. And just next to them there's gonna be a small relief in the channel where the first part of the clamp can fit up into and slide over. Slide it towards that bracket until it hits. The same will be done close to the canister at the front, and get the secondary piece slid into place as well. Here it might be a little bit more difficult to get it to slide in, just because there's more obstructions on the underside of the bed rail. But get the two pieces joined together. You may even consider sliding it into that relief already joined up, just gonna kind of depend on what works best for you and your bed. You can push those pieces together. We actually found it better to have the first clamp already in place and just push down on the side rail a bit, and we can attach the hand knobs now. Those hand knobs will each get a split lock washer and a flat washer. And on the other side to hold it in place, there's these small cylindrical blocks that will go on the other side of the clamp where there's a small cutout. Thread the hand knobs into them. And once that's started, push down and out on the rail to try to get it to sit as flush to the bed rail as possible, and tighten this down. We'll repeat this process towards the canister at the front of the truck bed. Your kit is also gonna come with kickstands. These will only go at the back clamps closest to the tailgate. So in the center where the two clamp pieces join together, there's a small hole. Pass the threaded bolt through with the kickstand facing towards the outside of your truck bed, and you may need to loosen this up so it sits a bit closer and actually fits. But we basically want this to make contact somewhere flat with the sidewall of the truck bed. So get this adjusted however you need until you can pass it straight through. Secure it on the other side with a flat washer, lock washer, and wing nut. And then, tighten it by twisting that black hand knob on the kickstand to extend it out and secure it. With everything clamped in position, we can go ahead and test for fitment. For that, I'm just going to unroll the cover and bring it to the end. Right now it feels like everything's moving pretty smoothly. A little bit of stiffness, but that's totally normal straight out of the box. Your kit does come with some lubricant that we'll apply later to help it move smoother, and it'll tend to break in over time. Tailgate closes just fine. We're getting a pretty good seal here on the weather strip. And then, as far as retracting the cover goes, it doesn't glide perfectly smooth. But if I go and walk it the rest of the way, it doesn't take hardly any effort to push it the rest of the way back. Again, once we apply that lubricant, I expect that that's gonna be a lot smoother. If we found that fitment here was far too tight, then we could remove some plastic shims on the back of these rails that touch the bed rails on our truck to help just widen things out and give it a smoother path. Or if things we're too loose, there are extra shims that come in your kit that you can add to it to bring the rails closer together. And you can always take measurements between the clamp locations on the rails, your instructions give you parameters of what those measurements should be, plus or minus about an eighth of an inch. So if you need to get a more scientific and accurate measurement to see what you need to do, you can always do that too. But, for us, I'd say we're looking good and we can continue on. The one part where we need to make some modifications and drill some holes is running the drain tubes. There's going to be an end on the drain tube with a foam seal, that's gonna be the part that pops into the canister. Just look for the two tabs on the side of the drain hole there and that will let you know what's gonna actually click in and secure it. So just pop that in, you'll hear a click and it won't pull back out. The other end is the end we need to drill a hole for. So you can pick really any spot on your truck bed to do this. What I'm gonna do is pop this into position on the canister. Once I've got it secured, I can plan where I want to run my drain tube. And we've already checked behind the bulkhead in between the cab to make sure that there's nothing important back here, but I'm gonna go for a hole right there. The person we're installing this cover for today, wants these drain tubes to be as invisible as possible. So we still want some downward movement so that the water can appropriately drain out, but I'm thinking if we get a hole right here on this ridge, we should be good to go. And just repeat this process for both sides. So I'm gonna start with a small pilot hole right about there. (drill whirring) And then, we can go back through and widen this out with a larger drill bit. But likely you'll need a step bit, something like this to get a wide enough hole to fit the drain tube through. Now if you're using a step bit, just be careful that you don't go too far. Make periodic checks to make sure that we're only drilling the hole as large as it needs to go. (drill whirring) So we'll just go and do a couple rounds of testing. This definitely needs to be bigger for the drain tube, so we'll just keep going. (drill whirring) Once we've made sure that the hole is big enough for the drain tube to run through, I'm just gonna come back through with a paint pen and clean up these edges to make sure that there's no exposed metal to help prevent rust and corrosion over time, and then we can feed this back. As you're feeding drain tube in, you might notice that at a certain point it feels like it stops going through that hole. And that's because it's just running straight into the side or the back of the cab, and we want that to be running down with no low points like you see here. So something that I found worked well is getting something long and thin that can fit down between the bed and the cab of the truck, and just poke that drain tube. Help guide it down so that whenever it's going in, you can just guide it the rest of the way. So I'm just going to use this long magnet that we had in the shop. You can use anything that lets you reach down there and guide the drain tube down. At this point, there's just a few more things we need to do, and they're all gonna be very easy. The first thing, we've got that lubricant that I mentioned earlier. You can find this taped to the underside of the top cap. Just take that wipe out and just run it along the sweep seals on the side rails. It's gonna help make sure that things roll smoothly. And then, we can, of course, take that top cap, install it over the canister. And your kit does come with a single piece of hook-and-loop that we can use to secure the pole strap to the side of the bed. And with all those final pieces buttoned up, the installation is complete. Overall, it's a very straightforward process. As far as these retractable canister-style covers go, this is definitely one of the smoother ones that I've worked with, and the finished product is a very nice, clean look. Everything's low profile, you've got that security of a hard tonneau cover, and it's going to roll up into that canister nice and neatly so that everything is clean, we don't block the back window. I think it's gonna be a really solid tonneau cover. But that's just been our look at and installation of the Pace Edwards Switchblade on our 2022 Chevrolet Colorado. Thanks for watching.