Westin Sure-Grip Running Boards w/ Custom Installation Kit - 6" Wide - Black Aluminum

Video Transcript for Westin Sure-Grip Running Boards Installation - 2023 Toyota Tacoma

How's it going neighbors This is Ed here with etrailer.com and we're gonna take a closer look at our Sure-Grip Running Boards on the Toyota Tacoma. Westin is a really solid quality brand across the board as far as the Sure-Step. These guys are gonna give you more of a OEM look as far as how close it mounts to the body of the vehicle. It's a cradle mount style, meaning that the brackets hold the step from underneath and it's bolted directly to the frame, so it gives you ultimate, you know, stability for it. The material is a lightweight extruded aluminum that is powder coated to protect against corrosion. Aluminum in general is naturally corrosion resistant.

And then you have the polymer alloy end caps on the end that's gonna help keep the dirt and mud and grime from sticking to the the metal. Essentially, the weight on this guy's pretty sturdy. I'm confident stepping onto it to step into the truck and out, you know, putting my entire weight on it. So let's see how much space we have as far as ground clearance. So just going off of where we are from the ground, stock height, you're at 14 1/2 inches, and from the door, you're out about 5, 4 3/4 inches as far as how far you're sticking away from the door.

The step itself, the tread area, is right at 4 and a, yeah, 4 1/2. So decent amount of space to get your foot on. You know, feels really good as far as where it gives you to walk, you know, and does go all the way to the rear on your double cab model and still very sturdy going across. So very confident in that. So overall, really, really good step.

Now that we've taken a look at the step a little bit closer to see what features it does for your Tacoma, lemme show you how to install it. Overall, it's a pretty easy installation. So when you open your package for your running boards, you're gonna have two boards, you're gonna have six brackets. They're gonna be labeled and stamped with driver or passenger side. The driver's side brackets were in a green bag.

So you're gonna have one going to three points of contact that are pre-drilled already from Toyota. You have a bag of hardware. And the tools you need to get this guy installed is a flathead screwdriver, 13-millimeter socket, and a torque wrench. All right, now that we have all of our materials put together and we're under our truck, we're gonna go ahead and start our installation. You want to identify your front bracket. It's gonna be slightly different from your center rear bracket. As you can see, the connection point under the vehicle's a little bit different. The two rear are gonna be the same, and the one that's different is gonna be your driver front and stamped DF on the side of the bracket. Now you're gonna take your flathead screwdriver and we're gonna remove these thread protectors. And with this being a '23, it's not too bad. But if your Toyota's been on the road a few years, you know, it may still be a little bit corroded, but on this one, it's gonna be a pretty simple install, and it's just slightly threaded and then you just kind of pull 'em out. And then we're gonna take our nut, I'm sorry, take our bolt, lock washer, and flat washer and use that to install our front bracket. So I'm gonna put this guy in, try not to drop it on my face, just kind of start it out. And this is why I start to put together my fasteners to make it a lot easier to just grab it and get it in. And once I get the threads to bite, I'll grab my 13-millimeter socket and we'll just tighten it down. Now we're not gonna torque it all the way, we're just gonna give ourself enough play so we can make any adjustments if needed with installing the step. All right, we're gonna take our square nuts and insert 'em along this track. We're just gonna put three in each track to correspond with the three holes on the front, middle, and rear bracket. I'm just gonna kind of eyeball it and then make adjustments as needed. We're gonna align our bolts with the holes on the bracket and we're just gonna just drop it over. Small assembly tip, once you have your bolts in, it's easier if you're laying here at the driver's side to align the bolts into the brackets, saving you a lot of adjustment time, 'cause when I get those rear two in, I can visually see that, and it makes it easier to align the ones that are closer to my face, and we can get it all dropped in quite easily. So now we're gonna get our nuts and our socket wrench and fasten this guy to the brackets, as well as our torque wrench. So I would say that if you were looking for something that's a real easy improvement to get better stepping in and outta your vehicle, you can't go wrong with this one. So again, this is Ed with etrailer.com taking a look at the Westin Sure-Grip on our 2023 Toyota Tacoma.