Well....where to begin. This mounting kit is super sturdy, strong brackets, great bolts, lots of hardware which makes me understand (once it arrived) why it costs so much. It takes a lot of hardware to get steps onto a car.
Instruction manual -- Ok. Here's the deal the instruction manual. It's written with very few directions and the pictures. In fact, it's worse than that because it doesn't really much at all, but thankfully I went onto the Honda Pilot forums online and someone provided a link to a different installation manual which showed and was written with different (not necessarily BETTER details) but when I used both manuals it made the task at least DOABLE though it would still take time to decode like a puzzle.
As many have mentioned, the brackets don't take into account that the skid plate will obstruct one of the brackets from being able to seat onto the frame. I could have cut with an angle grinder either the bracket or the skid plate, but since I didn't own one, I drilled lots of holes with a drill bit and basically broke a portion of the skid plate away so that I could seat the bracket down properly. As others have mentioned, the Honda Pilot has three sets of holes on each side of the car for mounting brackets which confused me at first. I later discovered that only two of these mounting points are used on each side (for the middle brackets). That leaves two more brackets that have to be drilled into the frame of the car. The front brackets weren't too hard....just have to measure from the mud flap with a measuring tape 8-1/2 or 9-1/2 inches (I forget which). I also figured out that when tightening the self tapping screws, don't over tighten them and strip out new made hole. Also don't over tighten any bolts that are mounted in the step boards as they are in aluminum which will bend if you wrench too hard.
Onto the rear L-Brackets. Some people don't even mount these, and you probably wouldn't really need them, but I figured to try to use them as the rear step could use more support for some people in our family, and I wanted to try to use all the brackets.
This is where I had to get creative. The L-Brackets are shown the directions to be mounted under and inside the sub frame of the vehicle but at an angle that is impossible to install with a normal drill (the self tapping screws that mount the L-Bracket to the subframe must be drilled in). So what I did was I only mounted the L-Brackets on each side to the pinch bracket and thought maybe I'd just pay a mechanic who has a special tool to use the self tapping tek screws into the subframe. I later discovered that there is a $20 Dewalt 90 degree drill attachment that you can buy that would fit under and into the subframe to drill those puppies in there. So at some point I'll finish mounting the L-brackets, and until then they are still attached to both the step and the pinch brackets, so they're not going anywhere until then. Just shows you how strange this mounting kit is, and that at no time did it ever mention that you'd need specialty tools for the L-brackets to go into place (it just shows a little diagram where they magically go, oh to dream!).
All of this was doable, and I'm super super happy about the Westin brushed aluminum running boards, but boy was it a journey to get there!
