AMP Research side steps on 2018 Tundra

Just curious if anyone has been able to install the AMP Research side steps onto a 2018 Tundra. I've spoken to AMP and they say the plug and play version is not compatible with the 2018. I'm wondering if anyone has had any luck on the non plug and play version.

Thanks!

 

having mine done as i type, just didn't have time to install, also getting lift done, but they said no problem with the steps, hit me back and i will tell you the update

 

called shop and they are have wiring difficulties on the phone with amp research now should have good info this afternoon

 

Awesome, thanks for the update. Where are you located and what is the name of the shop you are having them installed at?

 

I had powered running boards on two previous F-150 trucks, they were OEM but were probably made by AMP. Anyway, it was recommended to shut them off (either in the inor out position) during snowy/icey road conditions because if they get stuck due to freezing snow/ice there is a good chance that you damage the motors.

 

Brand of lift n how how high of lift?

 

ok the install was a bitch, had to call manufacturer and get help, took a pro about 4 hrs to figure out. they look badass, they don't go down enough but i love the flush look, i used texas offroad hwy 69 nederland tx been in business more than 20 yrs. we are 10 miles from beaumont texas i got the pro comp 7" lift w coil-overs 5" in the rear for a more level look but i think i need 1 more inch in the rear a little lower for a level truck, hurricane harvey kicked our ass, got my other new tundra tss 2wd, couple of inches in the cab and it still drove like new, no problems all good now i own a monster
'

 

i didn't say what all this was about for the person reading for the first time,,,, i have a brand spanking new paper tag 2018 tundra sr5 4x4. got the amp research running boards, i just didn't have time and the install turned out to be hard for an exp tech, the 2017 kit was ordered but the plug and play wasn't plug and play so they had to hard wire the install took about 6 hours and i didn't pay any different than what they quoted in the beginning, seems to be a good reputable company my lift wheel tires coilover front shocks tint front window for @ $10k for everything labor lift coilover steps install not bad my first time so i was sweating paying that much for upgrades.

 

7 inch lift on a 2wd truck?

 

@Jsena has a 6" or 7" lift on his 2WD Tundy too. Check out his build thread, Snow White the title of the thread.

 

no way dude, i had a nice
tss 2wd and hurricane harvey flooded it so i upgraded this time to the 4wd and i jacked it up and did everything cooler too still got paper tags!

 

just so you know i wasnt trying to dog you but yeah i had a 2wd ram when i lived in Texas (born and raised) but since i moved up to seattle are its been 4WD all the way.

 

Really appreciate the update. I can’t find a shop locally that will install them so I’m waiting in amp research to release the updated wiring instructions for the 2018

 

7 inches baby

 

Hello. My mother, who owns a Tundra, told me that some of you all were curious about installing the Amp Research boards on your 2018's so I thought I would create an account and share my information to you all. I had ran into this issue with her plug and play kit I had installed on her '16, when she traded her '16 for an '18. Once I re-installed this kit on the '18, same problem. Boards didn't come down. This was early October. I contacted Amp. They did verify that the wiring in the new Tundra's had changed, including the OBD2 wiring but could not verify how to wire these boards up at that time. Only definitive answer I did get was that the '16 plug will NOT work on the 18's. A new one would be needed and they were weeks/months from having them available. Fast forward to late October, I contacted them again and they had told me they had just edited their instructions and sent me a pdf. Great! But, what I thought would have been an hour job *tops* getting these wired, it turned out into a couple hour ordeal due to them having a couple wires with correct colors/pins but opposite locations. This isn't an issue if you are wiring up a plug and play kit, once said and done, but if you are hooking up a 4 wire hard wire kit, keep this in mind. I will get into that later..

Here's what you'll need to do. If you are wiring a 4 wire hard wire kit, you shouldn't need anything. If you are wiring up a plug and play kit, you'll need the following.
Some wire. 20' would probably be plenty.
4 1N4001 diodes. Higher rated ones will work (all I had available was 1N4004's)
Solder, Heat Shrink, and/or a tap connector of your choice.

To hard wire a plug and play kit, you will have 2 purple wires. If you haven't pulled them up through the grommet under the drivers front floor board, do so.

Determine which purple wire controls drivers side and passenger side. These boards work off a negative trigger. Test as you like. I grounded one out then opened the drivers door. If the drivers board drops, you know that's the drivers wire. If nothing happens, it's the passenger side door. You can open passenger side door to verify if you'd like.

Once you know which wire goes to which side, you will have to attach 2 wires to each of the 2 purple wires, giving you a total of 4 wires.
The now 2 wires for the drivers side tap in on the drivers side, so you don't need much. 6" or so would probably do.
The now 2 wires for the passenger side will tap in in the passenger side kick panel, so you'll need to make those 2 wires long enough to do so.
Each of these 4 wires you now have will need a diode wired in line.

Now for the wiring. I will include their instructions to help give you an idea. I found them a bit confusing, so I wish I had taken pictures, but hopefully I can walk you through it fairly easily.

Drivers side...
Drivers front trigger will be in a 20 pin connector in the drivers kick, just left of the e-brake pedal. Blue 18ga wire, pin #15.
Drivers rear trigger they have listed as a Pink with Red stripe 18ga wire in the main junction box above the fuse box, left of steering column, behind the lower dash panel, which would have to be removed to access. If I remember correctly, I traced this wire down into the kick and made my connection there, but, I could be wrong.
If you are hard wiring a plug and play kit, since both of your wires are tied into one purple wire, it doesn't matter which goes to which. BUT, IF YOU ARE WIRING A 4 WIRE HARD WIRE KIT, YOU WILL NEED TO WIRE ACCORDINGLY!!!

Now for the passenger side. Once you've ran your 2 wires to the passenger side kick, make the following connections. I will give instructions as they were given to me.
Passenger side triggers will be in a white 22 pin plug in the passenger side kick panel.
Passenger front trigger will be pin #22, Green wire
Passenger rear trigger will be pin #3, Tan wire.
PLEASE READ BELOW!!! THIS IS THEIR INSTRUCTIONS, BUT THEY WERE NOT CORRECT, AT LEAST FOR ME!!!

In the end, if you are hard wiring a 2 wire plug and play kit, it doesn't matter. Just don't wire up one of the two wires to the green wire and keep opening the front door, expecting the board to drop, only to find out that it doesn't. This will frustrate you and cause you to come up with new words/phrases and take up way more time than needed. Once both wires are hooked up, they work fine. If you are wiring up a 4 wire hard wire kit, you may want to test these 2 passenger side trigger wires and verify for yourself that they control the door Amp Research says they control. You may find that the Green wire is the rear door trigger and the Tan wire is the front door trigger.

I'm horrible at explaining things but I hope you can make sense of this and it will help you get your boards working on your 2018's!! If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. I'll do my best to help you out. Sorry I don't have any photo's of the install. Pin pointing the correct plugs by following their instructions was a bit confusing to me, especially since there are multiple wires the same color. If need be, I can snap a few photo's to upload. Here are a few screen shots of the wiring instructions they had sent me. They should also be found on their website, perhaps listed under the 2017 and below model if they haven't included the 18's in their listings yet. If not, all other instructions are the same except the wiring shown in these screenshots. Just remember, double check the passenger side triggers, especially if you are using a 4 wire hard wire set up. It may be backwards from what they show. I can't stress this enough as I don't want you to waste time and get frustrated as I did. Good luck!!

 

I don't have these, but I read the whole write up. Thanks for sharing!!!

 

No problem! I'm sure Amp will have the OBD2 plug available at some point soon, but if there are any others, like my mother, who had traded up and wanted to swap parts over, or who couldn't wait for an actual 2018 kit, this should get them up and running.

 

Great write up my friend..

 

Now that’s a write up!!!

 

Thanks guys. She said she was on here doing some reading and found this thread. It sounds like Amp may not have provided this info to some others. As much as I struggled with it, I/we thought it would be nice to pass along what I had found out and save you all some install time, headache or wait time for them to catch up with the new truck. Once you have the info, the install is fairly straight forward and quick to do.

 

Much appreciated thanks!!

 

So Amp Research has yet to make a OBD2 plug and play available for the 2018.

I just received my AMP Research Power Boards and spent about 6 hours trying to get them to work. I was able to get the passenger side working fine. All the lights work. The problem is the driver side will not retract (and I have know way of know if it deploy either).

Needless to the say the directions from Amp are horrible. I have installed their BedStep and BedStep2 and they awful.

I was hoping you might be able to provide some insight.

In the instructions it says to connect the Grey power step wire to in the 2018 models the 18 Gauge pink w/red stripe. I was able to locate that wire. The positaps that were included for the installation are 20-22 gauge positaps. So I am uncertain if the wire is incorrect or if they just screwed up the instructions and named the wrong wire. Plus in the picture for that step it looks like they are tapping a smaller wire and not the 18gauge wire.



Then for the second wire on the driver's side it says connect to the 18 gauge blue wire in pin 15 spot. The 15 pin spot wire is light blue but it is not 18 gauge. So I tapped the wire in the 15 pin spot. I even tried tapping the 18 gauge blue wire that is in the same connector plug. I could never get the driver side to work.

Do you think you could explain again how you hooked your up? Do you have any pictures?

After 6-7hours I final gave up and closed the driver's side back up.

Thanks.

I will attach some pictures to this to hopefully show what I have so far.

 

J.M. I never took pics during the install as I never thought I would need them. It wasn't until after the install that my Mom had told me some of you all had questions, which inspired me to at least post what I did know. Pics would have been nice, huh? If you can give me some time, I'll see if I can get to her truck and snap a few pics of the drivers side for you...

 

Ok. I have a couple pics for ya, J.M. (Could not get them to load using Chrome. Only took me an hour of fighting before I decided to try a different browser. Lol)

Amps instructions are a bit confusing. Especially mashing the 18's info along with the previous years. Even more so when the instructions for the passenger side were bass ackwards. I can't believe they haven't came out with a plug and play kit yet. They told me last fall it would be 6 weeks, if that.

It appears that you have the correct blue wire. If I remember right, it was between a white wire and pink wire in this plug.



I know, I know. Scotchloks are frowned upon...
The dark blue arrow is pointing to the plug that holds the blue wire. As I mentioned above, it appears that you have that wired up correctly.
The red arrow is pointing to where I tapped into the pink w red stripe wire. There is a bundle running vertically, right up against the metal and the small pink/red wire is in that bundle. It comes down from behind the lower dash panel where the instructions says it is. Much easier to tap in behind the kick while you're there than to remove more parts (lower dash) to access it. This bundle of wire may be wrapped up from the factory. I can't remember if it was or not. If so, you'll have to unwrap it, obviously.


Hopefully this will get your boards working!! Let me know how it goes! Good luck!!

 

NKLNDYM,

Thanks! I will give that a try tomorrow evening when I get home. Was the pink w/red a small wire to where the positaps would fit or was it a 18 gauge wire? I see you are using blue connectors which makes me think it was a thick wire, but picture looks small like the wire that I think i got tapped correctly.

I wish they could have included some pictures in their installs. After spending 1k on their product some better instructions would have been nice.

I will keep you posted when I get this a try tomorrow.

Again thank you so much!
JM

 

Yes, some actual photos on their part would have been very helpful.

The pink/red wire is a small wire, just like the blue wire. Your positaps should work fine. I was in a bind and blue scotchloks were all I was able to get ahold of. I've never had much luck with them so I should probably replace them with something more reliable. The do seem to lose connection at times...

I wish I would have documented this while I did the install. The small pink/red wire I used, I know it went up into the dash but for the life of me I can't remember exactly where it went. I do remember the thick pink/red wire around the area they listed (the one you tried... I had tried as well) but it obviously didn't work. If you tear into it again tomorrow, perhaps you'll see the small pink wire up there around the thicker one. If not, just tap into it in the kick panel like I had. It should work just fine.

 

I got to looking at your pictures with some fresh eyes this morning. Which leads me to a couple of questions with this picture.


Is the red arrow I drew to the pink w/red wire the pink w/red wire that I need to tap? If so that is a much better location than the one under the dash panel.

Second, I think i currently have the wrong blue wire tapped when I went back and looked at my pictures. When looking at your blue arrow is that blue tapped wire in the column with the black on top or the blue on top? Or on the side closer to the body panel or the e-brake pedal?

Thanks.

I am actually looking forward to getting this straightened out tonight.

 

Yes. That should be the correct pink/red wire. I don't remember there being more than one pink/red wire in that bundle.

As for the blue wire.. Perhaps I should have looked more closely but I believe it is in the column below the black wire. Instructions for that hook up calls for pin 15, which would be the column on the left/body side. If I remember correctly that was the only hook up that was clear in the instructions and didn't cause me any fits.

 

Well...That is what I thought, but if you actually look at the diagram in the instructions, pin 15 looks to be on the clip release side, which is toward the E-brake. Lol...The instructions are such junk. I cant believe headache this has caused. My first instinct is the light blue wire the black wire column. I am going to go with that and try that pink w/red that should be in the tape bundle just to the left of it.