These rock slider steps have an interesting design and look good, unfortunately the build quality is less than expected. First, the access holes for the bolts are tight - whether they are too small or the coating makes them too small, I don’t know. I do know that it made the installation challenging. Once the bolts are seated and the nuts are tightened, the socket is wedged between the bolt head and the side of the access hole so tightly that you cannot remove the socket. I had to loosen the nut, pull the bolt partway back so I could remove the socket and then advance the bolt, wedge it in place with a flat screwdriver and tighten the nut from the other side. Especially challenging since the other side doesn’t allow room for a ratchet or closed wrench so you have to do it with the open side of a wrench. 5 out of 6 of the access holes were like this. The other worked like a charm and was super easy.
Secondly, the screws for the replaceable protector piece are easily jammed and broken. I read the instructions to take extra care to seat them properly but that doesn’t help when you cannot even remove some of them without them locking up and breaking off if you apply too much force. No matter how I seated them, I had 2 on one side and 5-7 of them on the other side that would get halfway in and lock up. I gave up and bought TEK screws and used them instead.
Thirdly, the welds were not uniform and looked amateurish. Fortunately they’re mostly hidden.
We’ll see how they perform once I get them out on the trails and rocks.
