Westin Platinum Series Oval Nerf Bars - 4" - Polished Stainless Steel

Video Transcript for Westin Platinum Series Oval Nerf Bars Installation - 2013 GMC Sierra

Hey everybody, Ryan here at etrailer. Today on our 2013 GMC Sierra 1500 Crew Cab, we're gonna be showing you how to install the Westin Platinum Series Oval Nerf Bars. But before we get to that, why don't we just check these out for a minute and make sure they're gonna be right for your truck. When it comes to picking out a nerf bar or running board for your truck, sometimes it can be kind of challenging. There's just so many of 'em out there. A lot of different styles and whatnot.

So, you know, you just have to ask yourself, what are you looking for You know, what do you think, what do you think looks the best And honestly with these, my first impression, I actually like 'em. Kind of your classic design, you know Nothing over the top by any means, but I think they've blend in pretty well with this truck especially being black. And with these being gloss black, kind of just looks right at home. You know There's a polished stainless steel version available too. So if you're looking more for the shiny or chrome look, that's always an option for you.

Which honestly on this one, having the chrome accents and everything, I think either style would work, work well. But just as important as it looks is, you know, are these actually gonna function and make your life a little bit better And they have these foot pads here right where you need to step when you're getting in and out of the truck. And they're gonna be four inches wide. So, you know, have a good amount of space there to get your boot on, or you know, your foot on, and make getting in and out of the truck a little bit easier. So we'll go ahead, just kind of check these out.

How they work. When you open the door, you got plenty of space to get your foot up there. And right now how I have them set up, there all the way pushed in. You can actually bump these out probably another inch. So, you have really big feet or something.

You know, you have some wiggle room there. But, one thing I do like about these is they're attached to the truck using the body mounts. And so those are pretty good size bolts holding these in and really solid bracketry. And that's not the case with all of 'em. Some nerf bars and running boards will just thread into small weld nuts. And so this is definitely an advantage, and these things are pretty stout. I mean, I'm 180, 190 pounds. And I mean, they feel solid. Little bit of movement in 'em, but I mean, when are you gonna be jumping up and down on 'em, right So, that's good to see, and shouldn't have to worry about these bending or anything along those lines. Underneath the truck, here's kind of just a better look at the attachment points. So all three attachment points are gonna use the body mounts, and they even have, you know, they come with actual high quality hardware and the brackets and everything you need to get 'em installed. So, should last a long time. And something else I think will help with the longevity is these nerf bars actually come round-in, or turn in and sit flat against our bracket. And so there's no open or exposed holes. So that should really help keep moisture, and dirt, and stuff like that outside of, or prevent it from getting inside of your nerf bar and rusting it out. Other than that though, at the end of the day, I mean it's a nerf bar, you know what I mean It's made well. It's gonna help you get in and out of the truck. And I feel like it's really just gonna boil down to what you like the most appearance wise. But as far as getting 'em installed, pretty easy. Like I said, the body mounts, you just take a bolt out, put the bracket up, tighten it, and do that for all three, and then set your nerf bar on there, and tighten down the bolts that hold it in. So, definitely something you can do at home. And shouldn't take up a whole lot of your time by any means. But if you'd like to see how that's done, feel free to stick around. We'll go ahead and put these on together now. To begin our installation, we're gonna be here on the side of our truck. And what I like to do is just kinda lay out our brackets and hardware and everything. That way, kind of streamlines the process, and we can make sure we have what we actually need before we get going. So, we'll go through these kind of one at a time as we work our way back, but we're gonna start with the driver's side front, right here in this area. So with these trucks, you actually use the body mount as it, the attachment point. And so we're gonna remove this bolt. This is a 21 millimeter head, and you'll probably need a breaker bar. 'Cause these things are usually on here pretty tight. So I'll get this going. Broke loose at least. Like to kind of make sure it's coming out smooth, which it is. And then to speed things up, I'll just use my Impact to get it all the way out. Unthread it. Sometimes it'll just like, feel like it keeps spinning in there, and you'll just have to actually pull down on it to pop it out. But on our truck, we're gonna be reusing the original hardware for our body mount. But, we're going to then take your bracket. And so, the front ones are labeled. This one's DF, driver front. Obviously the other side will be PF, for passenger front. And it's going to bolt up like this. So, what you're gonna do is to take this, the little cup I guess you could call it, that was on our factory bolt. Take our factory bolt slide it through, and then get it going. Get it started by hand. And then I'm just gonna tighten it up a little bit. We don't want to really crank down on it. We just want it tight enough to where it'll kind of hold itself in position and we can still move it around just a little bit if we need to. That way we have some adjustability when we go to actually put our nerf bar on. Moving towards the middle of our truck. So, this is the body mount, essentially right at the end of our front door. And I broke the bolt loose. So I'll back it all the way out now. And then we're gonna take this bracket. All right And on each end you're gonna have a oval-shape hole. You want the end that has the bigger hole right here. So, same exact deal here. We'll take our bolt, run it through the bracket and our cup. And get it started hand-tight again. And then here at the very back, so this is right at the edge of our cab corner. Same deal. I loosened it up again. We'll pull that out. And then this one, you're going to add, they give you a thick flat washer. So, we're gonna put that on like that. And then here's what the back bracket looks like. All right So, bolt up through, through the flat washer, back through everything else. And just like the others, get it started hand-tight. Now we can grab our nerf bar and lay it out. These are side-specific, they're usually labeled. In our case, ours was. But just to show you the hardware that we're gonna use. So if you look on each end of our nerf bar, there's going to be a well nut in there. And there's gotta be a half-inch bolt, flat washer, and split lock washer. So we're gonna hold this up against the bracket, and then this bolt will just thread in there essentially. And it's not a bad idea to do this anyway before you put it up. Sometimes paint and stuff can get in the threads, and kind of make it a pain when you're trying to hold this up and everything else. So, that's the hardware combo we'll use for each end. And then the middle attachment point is gonna use something a little bit different. For the middle attachment point, it's just gonna have a nutsert in there. And you're gonna take the smaller bolt, put on a split lock washer, then your flat washer. And obviously when this lines up with your bracket, that's just going to thread right into there. So, now that we covered all the hardware, I'm gonna grab someone to help me lift this up and we can get it attached our brackets. So I couldn't find a friend, but not a big deal. I've just got one end started. Ideally, this is easier with two people, but we're making do, it is doable by yourself. So we'll take our bolt, and line it up. Get it started hand-tight. Once you got both the ends started, at this point we can come back to the middle one and get it going as well. Now you just want to position your bar how you want it, because you can't slide it out or in or whatever. However you like it. I think I'm just gonna push 'em in as far as they can go. That way they're level, and I think that looks a little bit better too. But from there, once we're holding it in place, I'll go ahead and tighten down this bolt here. Now each end of our running board, we can snug down those bolts. You can position the running board forward or back if you want. I just like to center it in our bracket here at the back. And I'm just gonna snug this bolt down, as well as one in the front of our truck with a three quarter-inch socket. And then once we have those snug, we can move to the one in the center. For the one in the middle, we're going to tighten that down using a 5/8 socket. And finally, don't forget to come back with a torque wrench and tighten all the hardware down to the amount specified in your instructions. Once you have the driver's side done, you're gonna come over here to the passenger's side and repeat the same exact process to get this one solved. And that'll finish up our look at, and our installation of the Westin Platinum Series Oval Nerf Bars on our 2013 GMC Sierra 1500..