Video Transcript for Setting Up Your Romik ROF-T Running Boards - 2024 Toyota 4Runner

Hello, neighbor. This is Curt with etrailer. And today, we're gonna take a look at the Romik ROF-T running boards on our 2024 Toyota 4Runner. Now, if you have any experience with Romik running boards at all, please leave that in the comments below. We'd love to take those experiences and stories, and share 'em with our other neighbors so they can make the best decision for themselves. Now, as the owner of a 4Runner, you probably know that there is some serious ground clearance under these vehicles.

And while that's great when you're out there and you're doing any kind of outdoor activity, off-roading, anything like that, it can be a little bit tough when you're trying to get in and out the vehicle, especially if you have kids or maybe you went to pick up grandma and grandpa. It's not always easy going all the way up to get in here. So having something like a running board like this is a great way to just cut that step down quite a bit to get in and out of the vehicle safely, which is the prime word here. The other great thing is that it also provides a bit of traction for you so that you're not gonna be slipping in and out of the vehicle as well. You don't really get that on the molding of your inner door there when you're getting in and out.

Now the running boards are made of aluminum while the brackets are a powder-coated steel. Both of those are gonna help quite a bit with any kind of corrosion resistance. They're also, combined, gonna give us a weight capacity of 500 pounds for these running boards. They're six inches wide, which is plenty of room for pretty much any shoe or boot size. And they do an excellent job as well of kind of channeling moisture along these ridges here and through these gaps that we see in the middle.

Some running boards out there kind of allow debris and moisture and things like that to collect, and if it's freezing weather, that could cause a solid slippery surface. It could cause a really bad surface on there too 'cause you don't wanna be tracking any of that mud in and out of the car as you're getting in and every time you step on this. So it's a great way to also keep them clean. Now as far as the door height goes and how much you're gonna get from that, the door height, we had measured at 22 inches from the ground up to the inner molding of the door to get into the vehicle. This is gonna cut that down by 14 and 1/2 inches, and that's pretty impressive.

So that's still a decent amount of ground clearance here while also cutting about six inches off of that step getting into and out of your vehicle. Now as far as length and coverage goes, this is about as long of a running board as will fit onto a 4Runner. It covers both doors easily, completely. Romik is also a bit adjustable, so you have options to be able to slide it back and forth further or closer to the vehicle. We even have options to lower this a little bit. When we installed this, we put it as its highest set so there is room to even lower this if you really need to. Just keep in mind, the more you lower it though, the more ground clearance you are gonna lose. Now aesthetically speaking, I think that these running boards are an excellent blend of both modern and rugged, which frankly is exactly how I would describe a Toyota 4Runner. They're gonna have that appearance of a factory board as far as the shape and everything goes. But having those kind of gaps and having it be that kind of matte finish gives it kind of that rugged, outdoor type of quality that I think fits the 4Runner perfectly. Now, this is a running board that you can install by yourself. It is a little bit more helpful to have a friend with you, but if you want to see how you can get these installed, just stick around. We'll do that right now. Before we install our running boards, we have to install our brackets, and before we do that, we have to assemble the brackets for the Romik running boards. Now a full bracket assembly is going to look like this, and we'll show you exactly how we get there. Now the brackets are side-specific on the vehicle, so pay very close attention to the diagram in your instructions and making sure you're putting the right set of brackets on the right side. They're also cut out for front, center, and rear to help you know where to mount them on their respective vehicle sides. Now it's very simple to put these together. What you're essentially going to be doing, and I'll show you on the rear here, we're gonna take it just like that. These bolts here are gonna bolt up into the vehicle. These bolt holes here are going to be for our platform area of the bracket that's actually gonna be holding the running board onto it. Now on the SR5 model, which is what we have today, which actually kind of sits lower than the other models, it's recommending that we use these holes here. However, with the adjustability of the Romik running boards, we could also drop it a bit if we want to. That's the great thing about these is the customization that you get with the Romik running boards. And to put those together, we used the supplied M10 hardware bolts just like this. So what we'll be doing is just taking that, putting the bolt through the bracket, and then we're gonna hand-tighten it down with the M10 nut. And we'll do the same here. And once we do that, what you'll have the ability to do is essentially adjust the pitch like we're doing right here. So it's very slight, but depending on how you want it, you are gonna be able to adjust that before finally tightening them down. But now that we know how to assemble our brackets, let's get under the vehicle and see how to install 'em on there. Now before we slide under while we're out here, let's just take a look at exactly where this bracket placement is going to be and where you're gonna find these mounting points. We've already installed our third bracket, our rearmost bracket here, just to kind of check it out and see how it was gonna go in. So the third bracket location is going to be there. The center bracket location is right here. The front bracket mount is right here. So that's where we're gonna find our factory bolts that we need to take out. To do that, we're gonna be using a 12 millimeter socket, and we're gonna go ahead under there and do that right now. Okay, so here, we have our front bracket mounting location and we're just gonna take our 12 millimeter socket and get those loosened up and taken out. (tool rattles) And you could set these factory bolts aside. You keep them if you like. But really, most of the hardware that we've seen putting running boards up in here even if you change 'em out is generally slightly bigger anyways. (tool thumps) So now that we've got those bolts removed, we're gonna go ahead and line up our Romik bracket here. And really I'm not gonna tighten these in super tight. I really just want to hand-tighten them. You notice that the bolt holes are ovular and that's so that we can maneuver it how we want to either further away or closer to the vehicle. So we're really not gonna tighten any of these down or torque 'em down until we get the running boards mounted as well and we can kind of see on the vehicle exactly how we like it. So once I get this bolt put in, we're gonna put in the other one, hand-tightened again and move on to our center. The center is gonna mount exactly the same as this. Same hardware, same tools. The only difference is the bolts are located a little bit closer together. But other than that, it's the same idea as the front bracket and the rear bracket. And once those are on, we'll be able to grab our running boards and mount those. Now that we've got our brackets installed, it's time to take a look at the running board itself. Now if we turn it over, what we'll find are three slotted plates. These move side to side on us, and these are gonna be what attaches the running board to the brackets themselves. So what we'll end up doing is setting this down on the brackets and getting under there and lining these up. But before we do that, it can be a little difficult to see what we got going on down there when we get to that point. So I just wanna walk you through what you're about to see. So the first thing that you'll do is take this plate. Once you're underneath there and you got it lined up with the slot on the bracket itself, you're gonna take this plate. It's gonna go over just like this. We're going to slip in between the plates these spacers. Now these spacers double up. Not only are they spacers, but they're all gonna help us out because what needs to go in here is a carriage bolt. So it's not gonna be something we'll be able to grip from the back while we screw on the nut. So what we'll do is we're gonna feed this through and also through our bracket, and tighten it up that way. This will hold the bolt in place so that we can torque it down and get it in its spot. Now the reason for these brackets is to give us adjustability forward and back on the running board. Remember, we mentioned that these are very customizable. So that's how that's going to work. Now let's get on underneath there and check it out. Now it's time to put the running board on the bracket. And just bear in mind when you put these on, we left these two bolts on the bracket loose. That's gonna help us out with our pitch. So for now, when you put these on here, expect it to kinda slant down towards you. Now these are adjustable by length as I mentioned before. However, one important thing to note is that there is this kind of flange that sticks up in the back. They really are gonna take up the entire usable length of the 4Runner, so there's not a whole lot of adjustment back and forth. We can get around this a couple of ways though. One way is to lower the brackets even lower. Now that is gonna cause you to lose ground clearance. So if you are using it for kind of recreational or off-road purposes, that may not be the best way for you to go. The second way to do it, right back here, there's this tab that really doesn't have a whole lot of use with the running board on. That is something that you could just remove completely and that should give you just a few inches to move it back if you'd like to get it a little more centered. The other way to do it would be to take this kind of flange that they have back here and go ahead and trim it a little bit. So with that tab that's still in there, you could trim it down to go right back against that tab and you'll get the extra inches going back that you're looking for. As it sits right now though, it is right up against the mud flap in the back here. It does cover both doors though. It covers completely the entry even to the second row. So it's not like you'd have to move it. It'd be more about your preference. Now what we want to do is get under here and we're gonna line up the slots on the bracket with the slots on those sliding plates underneath the running board just like so. We're gonna do that on all three brackets and then we're gonna grab our new plate and our spacers and bolts and get these attached. We're gonna go ahead and take the additional plate. We're gonna lift our running board and slide that right underneath as such. We want to make sure that this curved lip of it is pressed up against it back there. Now that we've got that in place, this is where it can get a little bit tricky. We're gonna take our spacer plate here, and we're gonna kind of work that in until it's over the bolt hole. So now we've got one bolt through and we're gonna just kind of slide that up and out of place. We've got our second spacer set down here. So we're gonna come up top and feed our carriage bolt through. This takes a bit of pressure 'cause remember that spacer plate is intended to grip it for us as we're screwing on the nut for this carriage bolt. So you're gonna have to really kind of pop it in. There it goes. And these are going to be adjustable back and forth. These are what's gonna allow us to adjust the running boards either closer to or further away from the vehicle. Now that we've got those in place, we're gonna go ahead and for now, just hand-tightened the nuts onto it 'cause we want to leave that adjustability until we get the whole running board mounted on the other two brackets. And then we're gonna take a look at it and see where we might wanna make some adjustments and improvements. Now we've got our running board placement right where we want it, so it's time to get everything tightened down. First, we went ahead and tightened down the board to the lower half of the bracket. We did that first because we want the board to be in a good place when we're trying to lift it and maneuver it to tighten these bolts down for the pitch. Once we have these tightened to where we want 'em, these tightened to where we want 'em, we're gonna go ahead and bolt the brackets to the vehicle using the proper torque spec for that. And by the way, just so you're aware when you get under here, you might wanna bring an extension or two for your wrenches because there are some very tough fits in here with the way that these brackets are built. As you can see, I'm not getting a lot of leverage to get much going on here. There it goes. Okay. And that's our final bolt and we have our running boards installed and ready to hit the road. So there's a look at the Romik ROF-T running boards on our 2024 Toyota 4Runner. I'm Curt with etrailer. Thanks for stopping by.