Installing Side steps

I've got wee ones--three--plus a perfect five foot wife.  A tall rig causes accessibility issues that have been building for years. I'd looked at getting some rock sliders from BJ'S Off Road, inverted to tuck not quite so high up into the door rockers.  I would have loved to have had them, but they were cost prohibitive (not that BJ's overpriced them, just that they were more, with shipping, than I could reasonably afford).

There are no bolt-on steps for these idiosyncratic vehicles, despite their long run from 1963 to 1991.  After doing a bit of searching on Amazon, I found a step that I thought might work, so I ordered one (I'd eventually need four, one for each door).

It wasn't a perfect fit, and there were some installation issues that I'll point out below; however, they do the job and look right, so I'm pleased.

They screw into the vertical back of the lower rocker panel (where the open-backed square portion of the bracket is) and then bolt through the rocker seam and up into the bottom of that same square bracket.  In the picture below, you can see the silver heads of the bolts.

The above picture of the step for the driver's side rear door also highlights the primary installation difficulty: the frame rail and front spring perch for the rear leafs.  It's a tight fit to get a drill in there to screw a pilot hole and then get the screw itself in there.  I had to do it at a steep angle and work hard at it for quite some time to get it in there.  It was a real pain.  This was the first one I installed, and if I had to do it again, it'd be the second or the third so that I wouldn't have to learn not only how to install the step but also how to do it in the hardest spot.  It alone took me as long as the other three.  Additionally, note the stamped L-bracket in the upper right corner of the picture that joins the Jeep's flood to the rocker panel.  I used that as a point of reference to get both rear door steps aligned in parallel with one another.

Here's the front passenger side step mounted up.  This shot shows another bracket that connects the Jeep floor to rocker panel.  It also worked nicely as a point of alignment for the two front steps.  These were considerably easier to install, though the frame rail on the left was still a bit of a bugaboo.

They aren't aesthetically perfect, sticking out a little more I had expected, but they work well for the kids and wife, which is great..