Tonneau Care Guide Featuring Wolfsteines

Is your tonneau cover facing the elements unprotected? Has neglect faded its finish? Don't worry, we're here to help!

Truck bed covers are available in many different styles and materials, but none are more popular than tonneau covers. Tonneau covers bring a ton of great benefits with a relatively low cost when compared to their fiberglass counterparts. They provide protection for the miscellaneous items that tend to stay in your truck bed along with improving aerodynamics for better gas mileage. While tonneau covers are a relatively lower cost than other options, a good quality cover will still cost you. And just like your paint, you will still want to protect and care for the cover to ensure you get plenty of years out it. So this raises the question “How exactly do you care for tonneau?"

Generally, tonneau covers are made from vinyl or a blend of other similar materials designed for exterior use. Just as you would only want to use leather products designed for use on leather, you will want to use a product line designed for use on tonneau covers. Wolfsteins line of tonneau care products, just as the name implies, is specialized for use on tonneau covers. Wolfsteins Tonneau Cover Cleaner and Wolfsteins Tonneau Cover Protectant sport a plethora of benefits along with simple application. Let's cover how easy these products are to work with and showcase their benefits!

Step 1: Cleaning

Get started by thoroughly rinsing the tonneau cover to remove any lose dirt. Staying on one side of the truck, either the driver's side or passenger's side, spray the cover in a sweeping pattern towards the opposite end. This will help carry any lose dirt fully off the cover. Once fully rinsed liberally spray the Wolfstein's Tonneau cover cleaner on the cover. I tend to spray the cleaner in a short sweeping pattern to get a good amount of coverage out of each pull of the trigger.

Depending on the level of contamination, some light to medium agitation may be required. This cover in particular will need some extra TLC, so we are going to use the RaggTopp Premium Convertible Top Brush to agitate. If you happen to be a shorter person or you're working on a taller truck like this F-350, you can always use a car wash brush like the Montana Boars Hair with a Telescopic handle. This brush is soft enough to be used on paint, so it will work perfect for our tonneau cover!

Once you've fully cleaned the surface, be sure to thoroughly rinse off the cleaner. While Wolfsteins Tonneau Cleaner is designed to leave no residue behind, some covers can pool water if they don't have support bars.

Before we can move on to protecting this cover, we need to dry it. For this I reach for my personal favorite, the Guzzler Waffle Weave Drying Towel. This towel is super absorbent and will easily soak up the water that is left over on our tonneau cover.

Fold your towel into a manageable size, such as in fourths, and start drying the cover. The guzzler will easily lift the water off the surface without the need for dragging. However, you can drag across the surface to get that hard to reach middle section.

Step 2: Protecting

Now that we have fully cleaned and dried this cover, lets pull it into the shade to get it protected. When applying Wolfsteins Tonneau Cover Protectant you will want to make sure you are in the shade and still working on a cool surface. Vinyl tends to expand and contract with temperature changes. Applying this product in the direct sunlight will cause streaking as the material expands.

Since we are working with a neglected cover that has no protection, we need to liberally spray Wolfsteins Tonneau Protectant. Maintaining protection in the future will require much less product. Start working the product in with a microfiber applicator creating an even layer across the cover. Wolfsteins Tonneau Cover Protectant dries to the touch nearly immediately after application and will instantly reflect its new enhanced appearance.

PRO TIP: If the bed rail caps are looking neglected as well, you can use Wolfsteins Tonneau Cover Protectant to restore their appearance too!

Once fully applied, pull your truck back out into directly sunlight. Vinyl is also a porous surface. Now that we have an even and dry layer of protection on the surface, the sunlight will open the pores of the vinyl to produce a rich matte finish. If you happen to be a high gloss kind of person, simply apply an additional layer.

Wolfteins Tonneau Cover products provide a simple yet highly effective solution to tonneau restoration and care. That's how they earned the endorsement of Roll-N-Lock and Haartz, the leading manufacturers in tonneau and automotive fabrics!

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