The Jeep Story – Steps

My wife and I are not tall people. We also have 2 young daughters. Our 2014 Rubicon came with stock rocker guards. No steps like the Sahara model. While these worked good for protecting the side of the Jeep, they didn’t provide us with a step after we lifted the Jeep 3.5 inches. It was pretty tough to get in and out of. We didn’t have plans to do too much rock crawling so we didn’t need hard core rock sliders.  After looking at all the options on the market, we decided we liked the look of the AMP Research PowerStep running boards. These are power steps that deploy when the door is opened and retract back up once the doors are closed. When they deploy, they also provide a nice set of LED lights to illuminate the running boards. AMP had just released a dual motor version of the steps called the PowerXtreme. With a ruggedized texture to provide more traction when wet or covered with mud or snow, these really fit the bill since we snowboard often and camp in the dirt and mud. They cost about $1800 and they were a blast. The kids loved them, the wife thought they were awesome…

…until they didn’t work all the time. Unfortunately, these became the first casualty of the build. After working with my shop to get the first controller swapped out, it too began working intermittently. LUND who owns AMP has great support. I worked with them and they sent me the most current version of the controller. They didn’t even put me through the hassle of sending the old controller back. Sadly enough, that one failed too and I had to send them back to Extreme Terrain. Again, LUND made this very easy despite some initial push back from Extreme Terrain. Both were extremely helpful with the whole process in the end. It took about a couple of weeks to get the funds back into my account but I was on the prowl for some non-electric replacements. I’m looking at some grab handles too. Like I said, we are not of the tall variety.

More to come.