Extang Trifecta cover came in!

[silverz51]

Fedex dropped it off yesterday. I was completely excited about.

The bad:
There was some sort of blue ink or paste on the corner of the box. That crap got all over my hands and my shirt. Did not notice until I was smeared with the blue crap. It even got on my newly spray-lined tailgate

The good:
The cover itself was not stained with the blue sh*t. It was easy to set up and a snap to install. Looks great and I actually believe it helps it aerodynamically. It might be a placebo effect, but I can feel it coasting better on the highway.

The tailgate seal came as well and I installed it although I don't think I did it in the best way. I could not find any explicit instructions on how to install the thing anywhere I looked....

 

[73F100Shortbed]

Looks great!

 

[fatherdoug]

Looks great!

I agree. Does it fold up?

 

[O'Rattlecan]

It looks great and will provide good cover.

I think you're right about it being a placebo effect. I've seen studies that show that having no tailgate or having a cover actually increases drag on the truck. Having the gate helps air circulate and create a fluid barrier to drag.

Ryan

 

[Austin]

For your viewing pleasure: (BTW, cover looks great!)

 

[silverz51]

I agree. Does it fold up?

Yes, it does fold up to access the bed. However, they warn you against driving with it partially open....

It looks great and will provide good cover.

I think you're right about it being a placebo effect. I've seen studies that show that having no tailgate or having a cover actually increases drag on the truck. Having the gate helps air circulate and create a fluid barrier to drag.

Ryan

Actually, at least one bed cover manufacturer did some wind tunnel tests with various trucks with and without covers. They also performed some fuel consumption tests.
Although the results were not uniform from truck to truck, they did appear to improve mpg over the truck with tailgate but without the cover. Extang claims 10% mpg improvement, but I would be thrilled with half of that (in 4000 miles one could save about 13 gal.) it's not spectacular, but 13 gallons are 13 gallons... In 40K miles it's 130 gal, that's more than enough to pay for the cover. I think the covers like camper shells are the ones that actually hurt mileage..

 

[kiwi f150]

That does look real nice on there - and thats a real nice truck to look at too

 

[silverz51]

That does look real nice on there - and thats a real nice truck to look at too

Ta mate

 

[silverz51]

For your viewing pleasure: (BTW, cover looks great!)

Thanks Austin . BTW, the mythbuster guys are Ok and all, but their methods of proving or disproving things are always a little... strange? Pretty amusing and all but not very scientific. They are more like you & me just going out there and doing little experiments LOL! They might be right but it does not really prove much more than that they did what they did.

Here is a report of a study conducted on the subject http://tinyurl.com/Bed-cover-study. Of course, it does not prove that it will work in my truck..... I'll see what it does over a 4000 trip by recording the mileage and fuel consumption. That ought to give me a reasonably accurate mpg...

 

[silverz51]

It looks great and will provide good cover.

I think you're right about it being a placebo effect. I've seen studies that show that having no tailgate or having a cover actually increases drag on the truck. Having the gate helps air circulate and create a fluid barrier to drag.

Ryan

Actually, it was the SEMA which conducted the test. Of course, they have a vested interest in the sale of accessories, after-market stuff, etc. Still, here is what they found with the 2005 F150 with 6'-5" bed. It's not a 9th gen like mine but anyway:

We then tested the 2005 F-150 with the 6 foot 5 bed. We were able to test six tonneaus
on this truck and again, all of them improved the coefficient of drag. We also tested the truck
with the tailgate down, to see the effect if any on Cd. Chart 3 displays these results.

The first tonneau was a one-piece, hard tonneau. At 40 mph, Cd was improved to 0.971.
At 68 mph, Cd was improved from 1 to 0.955, and at 85 mph Cd was improved to 0.953 (4.7%).

Tonneau 2 was a folding vinyl cover. Cd decreased to 0.962 at 40 mph, 0.955 at 68 mph and
0.958 at 85 mph, an improvement of 4.2%.

Tonneau 3 was also made of vinyl. The coefficient
of drag was 0.953 at 40 mph, 0.940 at 68 mph and 0.941 at 85 mph, which represents an
improvement of 5.9%.

Tonneau 4 was a folding vinyl cover. Cd was 0.961 at 40 mph, 0.946 at 68 mph and
0.944 at 85 mph. This represents an improvement of 5.6%. Tonneau 5 was a retractable hard
tonneau. In this case, Cd improved to 0.973 at 40 mph, 0.959 at 68 mph and 0.958 at 85 mph.
This is an improvement of 4.2%. And the final cover, Tonneau 6, was made of fiberglass. It
improved Cd by 7.8% at 85 mph with a value of 0.923. The values at 40 mph and 68 mph were
0.938 and 0.922, respectively.

For all six tonneaus, the value for Cd decreased significantly above 40 mph, but leveled
off at 68 mph. We also tested the truck with the tailgate down, to see if there was any difference
in Cd. In this case, Cd did decrease, but not in a significant way. Its value was 0.992 at 68 mph
and 85 mph, an improvement of 0.8%.