Why I Can't Recommend Renegade Tonneau Covers (An Honest Review)
- 4 minsFor this 2013 Ford F-350 Super Duty owner, the Renegade Tonneau Cover gets 2.5/10 stars.
I bought the Renegade Tonneau Cover in April 2021 after weeks of research. Having been a previous BAK Revolver X2 customer, I was looking for something a little more forgiving and durable. I spotted another truck with a DiamondBack cover, and research into that led me to Renegade.
After finally receiving my cover nearly four months after ordering, here’s what I found:
- It covers the bed
- It keeps things in the bed pretty secure
- It keeps those secure things pretty dry
- It’s heavy duty
- It looks awesome
- It’s L-track system can come in handy
These are all qualities of a typical tonneau cover, except for maybe the heavy-dutyness and the unique L-track system.
Fast forward nearly two years…
- 50% of the time I can’t get it to open properly
- The panels are pretty heavy
- 50% of the time I can’t get it to close properly
- The panels have a habit of shifting, especially in an open position on a bumpy road
- Did I mention that it’s heavy?
In all seriousness, though, the heavy dutyness of this tonneau cover (2,000 lbs bearing weight!) does come at a cost: you won’t be taking this off by yourself unless you have a Tacoma. Opening and closing the front or rear panel is an exercise in delicateness. Close it too hard, and the rail might come out of alignment and you’ll find yourself in the bed of the truck trying to get it situated just right. Allow it to slam down and you’ll be lucky to not lose a finger.
The attachment points for the rails in my F-350 are near the front and rear stake pockets (the holes in the bed rails). So, for each rail, there’s only two mounting points. This allows the rail to sort of ‘tilt’ down from its ordinary parallel position (to the rail itself) and fall out of alignment, causing the pins to bind or some other complication that results in the cover not opening or closing properly. This is my biggest complaint. I spend 80% of my time making adjustments to the rail and/or the cover to get it to open or close properly until the next time I need to open or close it. It’s a constant battle, and one that has escalated beyond annoying.
The rubber seal at the tailgate has degraded and separated from the cover due to the plastic tailgate end cap not sitting flush with the seal. A few months of this annoyance led me to solving the problem with some Gorilla glue, which has seemed to have help up well over the last 60 days.
Renegade has been fairly responsive to my complaints; enough to send me a shim to help with rail alignment when the torsion bar is installed. The torsion bar allows you to open both rails while only using a single handle. Given my rail alignment issues, however, I have found it less painful to simply use both handles.
I am willing to accept that my particular application may not be the greatest matchup for this cover, given the lack of solid mounting locations compared to, say, the late model F-150 and Super Duty models (with aluminum bed) and maybe smaller trucks. Had I known just how inconvenient and annoying it would be to operate the tonneau every time I use the bed of the truck, I would’ve gone with the DiamondBack or no cover at all. While I do occasionally use the L-track system, I find it hard to put faith in the sturdyness of the setup given the possibility of one or more corners not being fully “locked down”. The concept is cool, though, and having all sorts of tools and utilities mounted to the cover is definitely a selling point. But those accessories scattered on Interstate 10 doesn’t really sound appealing.
In 2023, I have serious regrets about purchasing the Renegade tonneau cover and given the opportunity to buy new, might look at the DiamondBack SwitchBack cover (vs HD) given the similarity in function to the Renegade cover.
2.5 stars for fitting the part of a great looking and somewhat function tonneau. -7.5 stars for all of the stress it induces.
James Denton
openstack, networking, and random musings