Tonneau of fun, Lying Ted

Cindy told me that my tonneau cover for the new Tacoma had arrived yesterday so it immediately took front and center of my evening plans.  The “Vanish” model I bought was a roll up variety, different than the trifold and snapping covers I have had on my old Tacoma.  A friend of mine had recommended this cover as he has one on his 2015 Tacoma and is quite pleased with it. As is the case with most of my automotive work, I had the camera rolling.

It did not take very long until I became frustrated.  The instructions for the install were not well done.  The descriptions were vague and the accompanying pictures they had in there were low resolution and small, making their usefulness limited.  Repeatedly I found myself having to read sections again and again, trying to interpret exactly what I was supposed to do next.

I then got to a point where I was supposed to be attaching an adjuster assembly to the front of the cover.  The bolt I had seemed ridiculously short, I could only get a thread or two to catch.  When I went to attach the cover to the side rails it was impossible.  By this time I had Cindy out there trying to help me make sense of it all.  Finally I realized that the problem was ultimately mine, as is often the case.  All the bolts were the same type but some were slightly longer than others.  I figured out that I had used a couple of the longer bolts for the side bracket mounting where they weren’t needed.  After swapping the shorter and longer bolts around the problem had been solved.

Yes the error was mine but the manufacturer could have made more effort to distinguish the different length bolts to avoid this confusion.  Even in the parts list it does not indicate how many of each size you are given.  Instead it is just listed as “nut’s, bolts, washers”. Anyway, the install took much longer than I expected.  By the time I cleaned up the tools and went back inside it was almost 8PM.  The good news is the new cover does indeed look nice and is much easier to open and close than my trifold cover.  This was the last current upgrade I needed to complete on the 16 Tacoma.  Now I can just get moving on simply enjoying the truck.

Yesterday was an interesting one in the presidential race.  Bernie won the Indiana primary after being behind in the polls leading right up to the election, a scenario that has been repeated several times thus far.  No matter how much big money pushes the Hilary campaign ahead, Bernie refuses to go quietly into the background.  Regardless of what you think of his ideas and policies, it is unlikely you question his honesty and commitment to his ideals.  The guy believes what he says and does so without influence from the mega-money conglomerate that runs the majority of American politics.

I was much more surprised to hear Ted Cruz drop out of the race, especially since as recently as Monday he vowed to stay in the race until the end, regardless of the Indiana primary outcome.  I guess I shouldn’t be surprised since Trump has famously nicknamed him Lying Ted. Hell a few days prior he seemed to double down on his commitment by oddly naming Carly Fiorina as his VP, something that is typically not done at this stage of the race.  Watching her frozen botox face creepily sing at the press conference might have been enough to finally sink the ship.

I am curious what else changed in the span of 24 hours to force Ted to adhere to his namesake one final time.  I am happy with the end result regardless.  It’s too bad that Kasich has no shot at this point.  I have really come to like him as a candidate and somehow he has managed to avoid the incessant mud slinging that has become a foundation of the 2016 Republican presidential campaign.