Tickle Law

I fixed my wife's AMP Research power step on her Expedition, same as my F150 and thought I'd post here for reference as I could not find much on this when researching it while fixing it. Now that I figured it out, I wanted to help others.

Basically what happened was the dealer replaced the motor and snapped the bolt holding the motor rod to the step bracket then kept it forever, I just grabbed it and said I'd fix it (I have a lift and tired of driving the wife out there).

The problem happens when the motor either gets out of sync or is installed in opposite rotation of the cycle. The motor has a rod that rotates moving the step up and down. There is a wedge against the rod that is held against it with a bolt for tension. I had to dremel a slot in the broken bolt, heat it up with the torch, and unscrew it at the same time. Then I tapped it out and found a bolt to replace it. I highly recommend a thread board like they have at Autozone or Lowes. It helped tremendously. But if you don't, I believe the thread pitch was M6-1.0.

The next step is where I needed help. The wedge has to fit between the frame and fall in there perfectly and then the bolt goes through the other side. It is impossible to do unless you take the motor off. Remove the two torx bolts from the board so the motor comes off by itself.

Now, due to the prior installation and cause of the bolt breakage, I couldn't get the bolt through the hole because the rod was in the way and I could not figure out how to get it in there because the motor rod was in the way so I took the motor off the bracket and realized the rod had a slot cut out but was in the wrong place. Here's where the fun happened.

I inserted two metal pins in the first two slots of the pigtail and using an 5 amp inline fuse, connected a 12 volt battery to the circuit and the rod began to rotate! So I rotated it until the rod was in the right place. After that it was a piece of cake. Just get the wedge in there with long needle nose pliers with the flat side against the wall of the slot, insert the bolt on the other side and start the bolt with your hand, just enough to keep the wedge from falling out. (This may take several tries). Tighten with a ratchet but don't test your strength.

When reinstalling, you have to open the bracket to the full open position, just switch the polarity of the circuit to change the direction and make sure the fuse is there to prevent damage to the motor if it goes too far one way.

Once you've re-installed the wedge and bolt and have the bracket at the open position, reinstall it to the frame. It must be in the open position to reinstall. Then attach the torx bolts back to the running board. With the door closed and running board setting to closed if you had it set to open, hook the battery back up to the pigtail and reverse polarity to close the bracket, stopping all the way up but before the fuse blows (I blew one on the first go round).

After this, just plug the pigtail back up, make sure all of your bolts are tight, then test it.

This took me 2.5 hours from start to finish. Once I figured out the "calibration" step and decided to remove the motor, it literally took only 30 minutes to complete.

I'm hoping this write up saves you some time. As I said, I have a lift so laying on your back may take you more time but this will still save you at least 2 hours of research.

I think I was detailed enough here but if you have any questions, reply and I'll try to answer them timely.

Truck Brigade