A Little Help from Fellow ROC Retrax Owners...Please

Hey fellow ROC Retrax Owners; I have a question/need a little help/advice:

Since I have had my cover, I've had one thing that is bugging me....it seems to be letting in a lot more water than I think it should. I mean, when I go through a car wash, when I drive in a hard rain, or even wash my vehicle at home, enough water gets in the bed where it runs down the bed and out under the tailgate. I don't think that much should be getting in.

The other day, I was looking at the front seal (where the Retrax canister meets the box under the rear window), and I noticed that it doesn't seem to be the same all the way across. By that, I mean, the middle of the seal is lower than the outside edges.

Now, I am not sure if I just have a bad seal, or maybe I didn't install it quite correctly.

Anyway, I was wondering if one of you fellow ROC'er Retrax owers, especially you folks who have very little water coming in there, could take a picture of the font seal on yours and post it here. I would like to compare how my seal is with how yours looks, to see if I need to do some adjusting....

I appreciate your help. :)

Thanks,

CD

I don't seem to have much, if any, water getting into the bed past the front seal. It seems to be a pretty good fit. I wonder if yours rolled down when it was set in place. I do have some water that gets past the side seals when they are not adjusted to touch the side walls of the bed. Even then it is not enough for me to worry about. It just runs down the wall into the channel that is created where the bed walls meet the bed floor and then it runs out the back. The bed floor stays almost dry. If I adjust the side moldings by pushing them tight to the bed walls very little get past them.

Here are a few pictures. If you want more from a different angle just let me know.

Just put mine on and still plan to use black silicone on a few gaps (maybe all 3 sides) when I find time to do it.
However, my front seal looks like Ultra-HOG's (uniform all the way across and tilted up rather than down. When I installed, it was necessary to hold and pull out the front seal with a metal pick so that it was not uneven.
I located the "gaps" that I want to seal by laying in the bed (tight fit) and looking for daylight while I closed the cover.
It seems to me that the only way I will have this as waterproof as I would like is to use silicone...............
Oh yeah, just don't overtighten the screws that hold the side rails to the front mounting brackets. I did this and broke off the well nut washer from the bottom of these brackets. Retrax is sending me new hardware but it will be very difficult to get the old screw out since the nut is loose and almost impossible to reach. Retrax should tap this bracket instead and get rid of these well nuts.

UH...thanks for the pics. Yeah, that is what I think happened...the seal must have gotten rolled under when I was installing it. I think if I have some time tomorrow, I will pull the whole unit out a ways and work on getting the seal the way yours looks...nice and even all the way across. I think that is probably what is letting water through.

Thanks again!

CD

Oh, another question that has been rattling around in my brain...has anybody found something other than silicone to help make the cover a little more water proof. I'm not saying that silicone won't work...but I was wondering if there was something out there that a person could apply that would stay plyable, in case there was ever a situation where you wanted to take the cover off...and you wouldn't have to worry about having to scrape the silicone off, and then reapply when you put the cover back on.

I don't know if there is anything like this out there...but I was thinking about something like what plumbers use. I think they just call it "plumber's putty". If you are running a line through a wall, you can push this stuff into the hole, and it seals it...but stays plyable. So, you can use it over and over again, if you needed/wanted to.

The problem with the side rail seal is that the bed walls bow out slightly but the rails have to be straight. Maybe a very thin strip of foam weather stripping could be applied to the bed walls before the rails are set in place. I imagine that it would be a bear to keep it in place while the assembly is lowered in place. A sheet of butchers paper that could be slipped out after the installation might work. The other thought would be to find the right kind of rubber molding to go just above the rail to direct water into the rail channel and away from the bed wall. Quarter-round or a cove type shape might work. Of course it would have to be removed if you wanted to remove the Retrax. I get so little water past the side moldings that I just don't worry about it. Your needs may be different.

Well, I don't think I have that much water getting in through the side-rails, to tell you the truth. It's mostly at the front and I am hoping adjusting the seal will take care of that. I just thought that maybe there was something fairly temporary out there that people could use if they were having any major water issues.

I don't need my bed to be water tight, per se, but it would be nice to know, if I throw something back there that shouldn't get wet, that it's gonna be safe if I drive through a cloud burst. I mean, isn't that the reason we bought a bed cover?

I took a few minutes today to see if I could adjust the front seal on the Retrax cover, so it would be even, like UH shows in the pictures he posted. After a quick initial inspection the reason I have the problem, with the middle of the seal being lower than the outside parts of the seal, is it was put on crooked. :mad:

After shifting the cover box around a little and maniuplating the seal a bit (stretching it a little and putting plastic Ziploc bags in behind the seal and pulling them out after re-installing the box, to pull the seal upward a bit) it seems to be better.

I'm still thinking I should contact Retrax and have them send me another seal, so I can put it on right...after the weather warms up.

All in all....A little disappointing, to say the least...you'd think they would have done a better job with that seal, since it's the main seal against water leakage/seepage...other than the seals along the rails, that is...

I tend to get quite a bit of water infiltration where the side rails pass over the tie-down straps near the front. I intend to silicone that area, but haven't gotten to it yet.

What I find odd is that some people report virtually no infiltration, and others, such as myself, tend to get quite a bit. I think more of it boils down to how well the bed drains - not how much water gets in. I find that my front bed drains are too small and are constantly getting plugged with pine needles and crap. Once they are plugged, any water infiltration becomes very apparent. I think some beds have better spacing between the front wall and floor that keeps the drains open better. If the infiltration continues to be a problem, I am going to enlarge the drain holes somehow.

At times, I think a cap would have been more practical, but I do enjoy the view out of the rear window.

I tend to get quite a bit of water infiltration where the side rails pass over the tie-down straps near the front. I intend to silicone that area, but haven't gotten to it yet.

What I find odd is that some people report virtually no infiltration, and others, such as myself, tend to get quite a bit. I think more of it boils down to how well the bed drains - not how much water gets in. I find that my front bed drains are too small and are constantly getting plugged with pine needles and crap. Once they are plugged, any water infiltration becomes very apparent. I think some beds have better spacing between the front wall and floor that keeps the drains open better. If the infiltration continues to be a problem, I am going to enlarge the drain holes somehow.

At times, I think a cap would have been more practical, but I do enjoy the view out of the rear window.

I agree with everything you said, Boreal. I think, unless a person were to do some fairly major siliconing, you are going to get water in the bed with a Retrax. I tried siliconing the area around the tie-down straps, and it seemed to help, but I am still getting a decent amount of water in the bed. Seems like not as much water gets in when your moving (as in driving down the road while it is raining) and I think that has something to do with the amount of water that settles on the front part of the cover while in motion...which isn't too much. But, as soon as the vehicle is sitting, water starts seeping in.

I think if you are going to make the cover pretty much water proof, you are going to have to put on a fair amount of silicone...which I really don't want to do. Yes, I woudl like it to be more water proof but, if I want to take the cover off for moving large objects, or if I go to pick up a load of gravel/topsoil/whatever, the old silicone would have to be scrapped off, and you'd have to put more on.

If a person wants a truely water-proof cover, I think it's pretty obvious you'd want to buy a cap. Everything I've experienced with my cover, and pretty much everything I have read about other covers, including the OEM, there is going to be some water seepage into the bed. I think the Honda engineers should have planned for this contingency and made the bed a little more cover friendly.

Yeah,

I'm becoming more convinced that yes, there is an infiltration problem, but the reason for the varying results is a drainage problem. My drainage holes in the front of the bed always seem to be getting clogged, thus that is where the water tends to sit. If you had a rigid sheet of plastic or marine plywood to lay down on the front part of the bed, things would tend to stay quite dry because of the elevated ridges on the floor. That will probably be the easiest fix if I need to haul stuff that can't get wet.

Just in case this helps, here is my thread on all the leaking areas that I have sealed with one small palm sized tube of black silicone:

http://www.ridgelineownersclub.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11476&highlight=retrax

Alot of the leaks I found seem to be the design of the ridgeline and not really the retrax. I have not done my next water test yet but I will post when I do. I believe that I have stopped 99%-99.9%:rolleyes: (fingers crossed) of the water entry.:D

OK, I have another question that maybe you fellow Retrax owners can help me with...

Lately it seems as if the cover of my Retrax is not sliding as well as it did last fall. Any hints/tips on how to get it sliding nice again?

Thanks, CD.

Candle wax. Take a candle out and rub it along the tracks. You could use canning wax (paraffin) too, if anyone cans food anymore. :eek:

Parafin wax works fine, and so does white Lithium grease. Use sparingly, though.