"How do you get in that thing?!"
You roll down the window, and respond, "Look down. Are you watching?"
Click. The door opens, and their eyes widen. The subtle whir of the motor tells you the Power Step by AMP RESEARCH extending from beneath the cab. Shut the door, another whir, and the Power Step retracts, disappearing to their stowed position beneath the cab. You get a look of sheer amazement.
That's the typical response of bystanders when they see a Power Step equipped rig in action.
The light truck and SUV market is still growing; and as trucks get bigger and taller, running boards or nerf bars are definitely a must, whether or not your truck is lifted. You can order running boards installed from the dealer, but the problem arises, when they don't offer enough of a drop to help you get into your rig. Additionally, the factory does their job of penny pinching to come up with running boards pulled out of the bargain basement parts bin. So they look cheap, but still cost a fortune.
Not to mention when you decide to take your truck off road. You can easily get yourself high-centered on your running boards, as they hinder your ground clearance.
When you are high centered, the running boards may even buckle, damaging your rocker panels to boot!
The other option is universal aftermarket steps that are designed for "every truck," and you end up drilling unsightly holes into your cab with their complex bracketry.
Any way you cut it, with a lifted rig, you end up high-stepping it into the cab. Most factory and aftermarket running boards don't offer a low enough step-in height, and are not positioned far enough from the cab to make it a viable solution; and if you do end up with a step that drops t-h-a-t low, it results in an unsightly eyesore, ruining the flow of the body. So, until now, it's been a Catch 22. Unsightly steps, or doing a chin up to get into your rig. Pick your poison.
AMP RESEARCH now has a solution to this problem: the Power Step.
The Power Step consist of extruded aluminum running boards that tuck away when the doors are closed, cast aluminum bracketry made specifically for your application, and a heavy duty DC motor that deploys and retracts the boards. All this is tied together by an elegant 4-bar mechanism that both moves and rotates the boards so that they are completely hidden behind the cab of the truck when they are in the stowed position. Just released is an all-new extension bracket that lowers the boards even more, which comes as a godsend to those with lifted trucks! These new billet drop brackets lower the boards another two inches, and moves it out from the cab another inch and a half.
The Power Step is loaded with features and latent needs of consumers alike. To start, the steps have a 600lb load carrying capacity each, which renders them extremely stout. The boards have an extremely wide platform (it will fit a size 10 shoe comfortably), and also run the entire length of the cab, which allows you to shift or position yourself in any way as you enter the vehicle without the fear of falling off or out of the truck. Families can even benefit from this feature when it is time for parents to buckle kids into child seats without being a contortionist.
Those latent needs? Well, the Power Step has a built in safety feature so when the door closes and the step begins to retract, it will detect whether or not there is a load on the step. If there is, the control unit prevents the board from retracting, saving the object, or the curious hand, from getting crushed. Your power windows don't even have this feature!
What else can you do? Well, you can hop on the front end of the board while refueling, and it provides a solid foot hold for you to wash your windshield! It looks like the engineering staff at AMP RESEARCH did their homework when it came down to the final design. The human factors they took into consideration when designing the Power Step was well thought out, where it not only swings the step down, but also positions it away from the cab to make ingress and egress from the truck a pleasure instead of a chore.
The installation went exceptionally smooth. The steps are completely concealed in the stowed position, and when extended make it a lot easier to hoist myself into the truck. The steps deploy and retract seamlessly in one motion.
On top of that, I'm not one to shy away when showing off the Power Steps to questioning bystanders.
Special thanks to crew at AMP RESEARCH and Truck Toyz!
| About Marty G.
"Progress comes from doing things in new and unexpected ways."
The installation of AMP RESEARCH's Power Steps on our project truck was done by the crew at Truck Toyz in McAllen, Texas. Marty Garza, owner of Truck Toyz, has an exceptional background in building trucks, which include suspension lifts to high performance parts, and everything in between. With a background in building and racing monster trucks in USHRA (and winning the Thunder National Championship in his truck Overkill, his third year in the circuit) Marty is definitely one of the most knowledgeable individuals in the custom and aftermarket truck arena.
He brought his skill and expertise to the aftermarket truck community by starting Truck Toyz more than six years ago. The shop modifies an average of four trucks per day, and as a result, has sold and installed more Power Steps than any shop, nationwide! These trucks include those owned by individuals and four Ford dealerships in the local area. The experienced crew at Truck Toyz finished the AMP RESEARCH Power Step installation in less than two hours, which included removing the original steps on our project truck.
In addition to being one of the nicest and easist guys to talk to in the Truck aftermarket industry and also being an entrepreneur with several successfull buisnesses in his native town of McAllen, Texas, Marty still finds time to persue his hobbies. Marty is an avid moutain bike racer and can often be found flying up and down the offroad trails which ties in nicely with his similar off-road passion of building awesome off-road 4x4 trucks for his customers. |
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