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

Video Transcript for Westin Sure-Grip Running Boards Installation - 2015 Chevrolet Colorado

Rob here, at e.tralier.com. And today you're gonna be taking a look at the Westin Sure-Grip running boards on our 2015 Chevrolet Colorado. Now, here we have them in black, but they are available in three different colors. The black, there's gonna be a Brite anodized aluminum as well as a brushed aluminum. So you want to pick up whichever color you think is gonna compliment your truck the best. But running boards are gonna serve two purposes.

They're gonna make it easier for us to get in and out of our truck, but they're also gonna give it a stylish look. And I think our Westins do a really good job of that because they have a really wide platform, so functionally, they work great. But if we step back and take a wider look, it really gives our truck a clean, nice, finished look to it. What I really like about these is the tread on here. Most running boards are just gonna have a pad or a step, usually it's molded plastic, and it's gonna have one at each entry point.

Well, on our Westins, we're gonna have this nice rubber strip that has a really good grip to it, compared to that plastic, but it's gonna run the entire length of the board. So even if we need to get in at a weird angle or in a weird spot on our door, we're not gonna have to fight trying to find that step. As you can see, we got a really wide step here. So whether we're getting in our truck or getting out, we can make sure that we have a secure footing. There are channels inside the tread here.

That's gonna make it easy for water to divert out of the way. And the fact that it's rubber's gonna make sure we have that secure grip. Now Westin does have an optional light kit that we can mount to the outside of our running board. There's a really nice custom look to it. So whenever we open our doors, they'll illuminate, not only looking nice but giving us a safe, secure way so we know where we're stepping.

Now that is sold separately and you can find it here at etrailer.com. Now our boards are gonna be made out of aluminum. So they are gonna be rust-proof, which is really nice, but it's also gonna help out when it comes to the installation because our boards are rather long, so we have to pick 'em up to put 'em in place. But since they're aluminum, they're gonna be a little bit lighter. But as far as the installation goes, it is an extremely straightforward process. You're not gonna need any special tools and you can actually just do it right in your driveway. In fact, let's go ahead and put these on together. To begin our installation, we're gonna start on the passenger side. Now we're gonna start at the very front of our passenger door, but we need to move in underneath the truck, but on the outside of the frame. So if we come in between the body and the outside of the frame in this general area, all the way towards the front, we're gonna find a few holes and a few rubber plugs. You're gonna pull those rubber plugs out. You can take a screwdriver, a pick, pretty much anything you have available just to pop those out. We'll have one on the inside of the frame, next to this small hole and one on the bottom side of the frame next to a small hole. And we need to move back, going along the outside of the body here, we're gonna find another set that's just like this. And we wanna pull those plugs out as well. So we're gonna have the same combination just a few inches behind the front ones. We're gonna pull those plugs out and we're gonna move down the frame. We'll see another set. We're not gonna mess with these ones. We're gonna move all the way to the back, at the back of the cab and we're gonna pull these plugs out. I wanna grab the U nuts out of our kit. And you'll notice it's gonna have a larger section sticking out, that's got threads in it. It's gonna be a nut so we can put it inside the frame. Gonna make sure that larger section is facing up so it's on the inside of the frame. We'll take the opening, slide it over the large hole and we're just gonna push it on until it engages and kind of lines up with that smaller hole next to the big one. And once you have it in place, the center will kind of hold it in there so you'll know it's fully in there. Now you wanna go back and we're gonna do that for all the small holes that we took all those plugs out of, using the large one to get it in place. Now we can grab our brackets out of our kit and we're gonna have two different brackets and there'll be three of each kind. You wanna make sure you grab the correct ones. This section's gonna go on the inside of the frame. This will catch that bottom unit that we put in place. And then you'll notice this large tab here with two oval holes. Those need to be facing towards the rear of the truck. So when put 'em in place from the passenger side, they're gonna sit this general position so we know this is the right bracket. But if we lift it up, we'll see that it's gonna line up with our U nuts, and we're going use the hardware in our kit to attach everything. Grab one of the hex bolts out of our kit, follow it up with a split lock washer. And then finally, a flat washer after that. I'm gonna loosely hold it up. And then for now, I'm just gonna run this in by hand to where it's pretty snug but it can still move around a little bit. And with that one bolt in place, I don't have to worry about the bracket falling anymore. We'll take that same combination of hardware and we'll secure the second location on our bracket. And once we have this one in place, we're gonna repeat that same process for the other two going back on the back of our truck. It's gonna use the same combination of hardware and the same style brackets. At this point, we can get our board prepared. We're gonna want to grab it, flip it over so the face is facing down and we can get to the back side. And if we look at the back and we look at the bottom here, we're gonna have three channels that are in the bottom here. We want to grab the square head bolts. We're gonna slide 'em into that channel. We put a total of three in the channel that's closest to the end of the board. And then we'll take another three of the square head bolts. And we're gonna come to the furthest channel that's gonna be closes to the truck body here. Now these don't really need to be in any certain position but I like to get 'em close to where they're gonna land. These are gonna line up with the brackets that we've mounted in our trucks. So we know that one is gonna be pretty close to the end, one somewhat towards the middle and one on the other end. And we can grab the large plastic piece. It's gonna have a little rubber weather stripping on it. If we look at the thicker part, also the shorter end here, this is gonna need to fit on to the end of our running board. If we come to the end of the rail here, we'll find a very small channel and that's gonna line up with that little mark. So what we want to do is, is we want to take our piece, and with the flat section facing down towards the bolts, wanna slide the end of it into that channel. And then we're gonna slide the entire piece onto the board until it's all the way on there. You should just be able to slide it on, make sure there's nothing stuck in the track, obviously, but once we get it on, just push it all the way on till it's pretty close to where the end is gonna meet that channel. Now, what I like to do is I like to lay my board pretty close to the truck and then get the bolts pretty close to lined up to where they're gonna match up. It's just a little bit of less work we're gonna have to do trying to hold everything. We want to take our board. We'll lift it up. And we're gonna rest it right on top of the brackets so that the bolts come down through. But you want to go through and make sure that they go onto each bracket. So you may need to slightly lift up, get the bolts to go into the brackets and come down through 'em and then work your way down as you go. And when we go to secure our boards, we want to put a flat washer in place. We'll follow it up with a split lock washer. And then finally we'll secure it down with a hex nut. Now, right now, you just want to get all the hardware on the bolts, just hand tight, just so we know that the board is fully supported. And then we can go back and tighten everything up once we make all our adjustments and make sure our board is square. Now, each one of the brackets is gonna get the same combination of hardware. So we'll put those in place for the middle and the rear as well. Now that we have our board loosely installed, you can see we got a little bit of a gap here, the hangover at the back, but that's a nice thing since they're still loose. We're able to adjust our board by sliding it either forward or backward to get it to sit where we want. So you want to get it adjusted how you want and then we can go back and tighten everything up. And when go to tighten everything up, we want to tighten up the bracket that are on the frame first. So we'll use a 13 millimetre socket and we'll tighten up all the bolts. Then, once you make sure your boards are still in the position you want 'em, we can come back and tighten up the nuts that are coming down through the bottom of the board. Now you can either use a 13 millimetre socket or a half inch socket to tighten these up. Now that our boards are all tight and fixed in place, if we look at this rubber strip here, we can see that it's kind of bending and folding in awkward angles. What I like to do is I like to come underneath the running board and just push it out. That way, it'll sit more uniformly and it'll hide some of the stuff underneath. And we know that it's not gonna be all bunched up. Just work our way across, folding it out and it'll sit better against the body of the truck. But with this side done, we can go in and repeat that same process over in the driver's side because it's gonna use the same style brackets and hardware combination to get put in place. But again, I'm Rob, here at etrailer.com and that'll finish up your look at the Westin Sure-Grip running boards on our 2015 Chevrolet, Colorado..