brandon_mcg

thats super nice. i'm not a huge fan of the roll up covers so that looks like a nice compromise between roll ups and fiberglass.

SailorDon

On Friday, I drove up to Dallas in the driving rain. About 250 miles. A few drops of water leaked in around the tailgate, but nothing else. That's to be expected.

When I got back to Houston, I washed the truck. No special attention to washing the tonneau cover. It got treated just like the rest of the truck. It leaked, both sides up near the front of the box. Very little water, maybe 20 drops.

I believe the problem is with the BakFlip dealer installation. He left the adhesive bar code tags on the gasket part of the rail that fits to the plastic cap rail of the box. The gasket won't seal with the bar code tags sandwiched in between. That's where the water was dripping on both sides. Right at the bar code label.

It is simple enough for me to fix, so rather than **** around with the dealer, I'll spend about 30 minutes to remove and re-install today and hope that solves the "leaks when washing" problem.



Of course I don't know if this solves the problem until after the next time I wash the truck, which I hope isn't too soon. It takes a long time to wash.

SailorDon

I disassembled the BakFlip tonneau cover. It turns out that the bar code labels are not the cause of the drip into the box. The problem is with the design of the seal between the BakFlip side rails and the standard Ford plastic cap rail on top of the sides of the box.

There are four leak points, shown by red arrows in the photo below.



Close up detail (below) of one of those leak points shows how the BakFlip seal doesn't follow the contour of the ribs on the plastic cap rail.



I you look carefully, you will see there is a bead of sealant at this leak point. I ran a bead of DAP 3.0 Gutter Seal the entire length of each of the BakFlip support rails. I haven't done a spray test on it yet, but I'm hoping for significant improvement.

Without the sealant, the water dripped in the spaces at the red arrows and collected along the entire length of the rails. The reason it looked like the bar code labels were at fault was that the water ran along the gap between the plastic rail cap and the BakFlip rail. It collected at the bar code label (downhill end), and when the label became saturated, the water dripped onto the bed liner.

With the sealant..... Wait until the next truck wash for the next BakFlip leak report. I'm hoping it will be "No Leaks".

I highly recommend this sealant technique, unless you don't care about a few drops of water on your cargo.

MarkY

Nice post Don. Keep us informed.

JOHNWSC

Don i will be installing mine on thursday do you mind if i contact you if i have any questions ? Also if you find it still leaks between now and then please let us know.btw,that cover looks excellent on that truck.thanks,john

MarkY

John, you shouldn't have any problems. I installed mine in about 40 minutes. Pretty straight forward.

JOHNWSC

mark ,
any leaks

MarkY

No leaks as of yet. But..... it is supposed to rain hard all week. I'll let you know. In fact, since I live in Phoenix, I didn't even hook up the drain tubes.

SailorDon

Sure thing. Send me a PM.

The entire disassemble, put in the DAP 3.0 gutter caulk and reassemble took me less than an hour. Six easy to assemble clamps and two thumbscrews. The rest is stick-on gaskets at the front of the bed and some stick-on rubber tubes to cushion the panels against the back of the cab when in the upright position.

QuoteWarz Insurance

This is definitely a great product. You can't go wrong with bakflip.