Video Transcript for Setting Up Your DeeZee NXt Running Boards - 2025 Ram 1500

How's it going neighbors This is Ed here with etrailer.com and we're taking a look at the Dee Zee NXT nerf bars for your 2025 Ram 1500. Now, when you think about adding nerf bars or steps to your vehicle, not only is it gonna give you a extra measure to get into your vehicle easier and give you traction when it's snowy or wet outside, but in my opinion I think it gives a nicer look to your truck altogether. So let's take a look at the step, and see what it does for us. We're six inches wide, so that's gonna give you plenty of places to get your foot on to get in and out of your vehicle. As far as the overall length is 86 inches, so it's gonna go basically the entire length of the cab area as far as your door, so you and your passengers can enter and exit pretty easily. The nerf bar itself is made of aluminum.

It's gonna give you a lot of strength and also the fact that it has rust proof properties, you don't have to worry about it rusting out. So like those older style steel tube type nerf bars usually get that rust on the bottom where they kinda decay from the water getting on the inside. Having that aluminum on this vehicle is gonna help get a longer life out of the nerf bar itself. So our brackets themselves are steel, however, they have a no rust technology powder coat from Dee Zee to keep it from corroding, giving you a longer life 'cause this is a life of abuse down here underneath your vehicle. Now Dee Zee does use a lot of nuts as far as the hardware that they use to secure your brackets and nerf bar to the vehicle.

However, it's pretty straightforward as far as your install. Only thing that you're gonna need to get going is gonna be a 13 millimeter socket, a 26 millimeter socket, a ratchet wrench, and I would say a tape measure would make it a little bit easier for making sure everything is nice and centered. We're gonna start our installation by cleaning our studs underneath our vehicle. We're gonna use our included die tool. It has a label on the front as far as which way you want to start it, and you're gonna grab your 26 millimeter socket to clean out those studs.

All right, and the studs that we're gonna actually make our contact with our brackets that need to be cleaned are right here. So essentially what we're gonna do, we're gonna get our die started with the side that's labeled and we're gonna use our socket wrench to fasten it down through the threads. And what this is doing is actually cleaning off the paint that's left over from the process of manufacturing the truck. Now this vehicle, we're just doing this as a demonstration, but just so you can see the difference between the threads that are cleaned off versus how it comes from the factory. In fact, in the manual it says that this stud will fail if you don't clean off these threads.

So you definitely wanna make sure you get the studs nice and clean before you go to the next step of installing the brackets. Now we're just gonna take our bracket and we're just gonna fit it to our studs. I'm just gonna take my hardware and just get it started to retain the bracket in the position. And now I'm gonna take my 13 millimeter socket and fasten my bracket to the body. Now I'm gonna fasten down all three of my studs, making sure that we get all the way flush with the bracket. And now I have it fastened down. Now as I was tightening the nut down, I found that I needed a deeper welled socket, so I grabbed one and we were able to get it fastened down. Yeah, when you get to this point, you don't want to overtighten or all the way secure your bracket to the vehicle. You wanna leave it loose 'cause it makes it easier for you to position your bracket with the bolts that are in the bottom of your actual nerf bar. With our brackets loosely installed, we're gonna now take the bolts and try to kind of eyeball and align it with the brackets. So now I'm just gonna kind of get a feel for where my brackets are gonna align with the hardware and kind of set it up to make it easier. (plastic rattling) And now I can just flip it over onto the brackets. (plastic rattling) We're gonna take our nuts and lightly fasten them on. And then just check for our alignment on the brackets. We're gonna put the nuts on our studs that are hanging through the brackets and we're just gonna go hand tight right now so we can make any adjustments to the position of our step. So I'm just gonna do this on each one of our brackets and we'll be good to go. So now that you have your hardware, you can make any necessary adjustments to the placement of your nerf bar. So I think we're pretty solid right here as far as contact on both areas. So now we're gonna go back through and tighten all of our 13 millimeter nuts. All right, now that I have my connections to the running board connected, I'm gonna go back up here and make the connections, tighten the connections for our brackets. So with our nerf bars attached to our vehicle, it feels nice and secure and I think that this is gonna just add to the appearance of the RAM here. One thing that I always recommend with these types of installations is after you driven around for a little while, you wanna just go back and check all your hardware to make sure that everything is as it should be. Dee Zee does a great job of making sure that you have a product that's easy to install, that's gonna hold up for a very long time. This has been a look at the installation and some of the features on the Dee Zee NXT nerf bars for your 2025 Ram 1500. I'm Ed, this is etrailer, and you have a great day.