Let me first talk about the water seal issue.
The tail part of the Retrax seal (the flap that extends over the side of the truck box) looks like it's supposed to fit flush against the box to be the first line of defense against water intrusion but doesn't. Even if it did, that would likely make the interference problem worse. See below.
The main part of the seal, the rounded triangle part, doesn't do the job, either. I poured water from a cup along the seal and quite a lot of water leaked through into the bed.
Second, but no less of an issue is that the seal interferes with opening the Rambox lid. See pics, below.
I sent an email over the weekend to Retrax and a response came in as I'm writing this post. I was very surprised and dismayed by the response. In relevant part, the email from Retrax states:
- "Though the functionality of the ramboxes will be slightly limited, you should still have access to them...."
- "Regarding the water intrusion, our covers will not be 100% waterproof. I can send you some rail foam if you think it would help, otherwise not much else can be done to help with that. As for the ramboxes. They will still be able to open and close, though the amount they can open will be slightly limited."
So it seems that they know the seals aren't watertight and also that the ineffective seals interfere with the Rambox lid and that's just the way it is so deal with it, Mr. Customer. With no disclosure in the product description, these two problems are completely unacceptable in a bed cover at any price. At $2500, it is an outrage.
I intend to reply to Retrax:
- That both of these issues should have been disclosed in the description of the product on their website.
- That the interference with the Rambox lid created by the seal is much more than slight.
- That I already figured out a solution to the problem that at the consumer installation stage is not particularly easy but could be engineered into the product with little effort or expense.
I really do have a solution that I consider pretty certain to work. It won't stop water from leaking past the seal. But it will prevent water from entering the bed by evacuating all such water via a drain tube. My plan is to do the modification within the next few days. The first part of the mod involves very minor alteration of the Retrax seal, which I've already done and it helped a noticeable amount.
It will be interesting to see if Retrax wants to know what I figured out.
Now on to the pics.
The soft stick-on seal shown doesn't look like it will seal anything and it also looks like it will deteriorate in the sun very quickly. I didn't pour water here to verify the leaking part and it's not been in the sun to see how fast it deteriorates. But this is minor. If everything else sealed, fixing this probably wouldn't be too hard.
But at each end of the Rambox lid there is a gap, as there must be. If the Retrax seal kept water out everywhere else, water will leak past the seal here and into the the bed.
Now to an equally troubling issue: the tail on the seal that overhangs the Rambox and the bed side on each end of the Rambox. When the lid is opened, the tail tries its mightiest to prevent the lid from opening more than a few inches. My guess is that the tail is supposed to slide up the lid as the lid opens and some resistance in opening the lid is just the trade-off to get a water tight seal. If that was the case, it's an acceptable trade-off. But, as already noted, there is no watertight seal and...
Even when the lid is forced open, the seal doesn't just slide up the side of the lid as it's raised. What you see in the picture, below, is what happens. And all the while, really ugly cracking sounds happen as though the plastic lid or black plastic cover is splintering into shards. That's not happening, but it sure sounds like it.
