DON'T Off-Road Your 2023 Colorado Until You Fix This Weak Spot

What's going on, guys? We are back with another video. My name's Armando, and in today's video, we're going to be going over an essential upgrade you need to do to your 2023 Colorado ZR2s, and that is this skid plate right here. This is a brand new product from LevelUp Suspension, and I'm going to be going over why you need it, and also how easy it is to install. So, let's jump right into it. So, now to go over why you need this skid plate for your ZR2. If you're unaware of what the skid plate is for, it is for your EVVAP system. So, from factory, there is the evap system is held up by a plastic bracket, which I have right here. So, this plastic bracket sits below the frame. So, there is nothing that's going to catch it or protect it when it gets hit with rocks. And it will if you plan to use your ZR2 off-road at all. Unfortunately, this is what's getting hit first. Not your frame. This. And to prove that to you, cuz we do plenty of off-roading with our ZR2. This is my factory EVVAP bracket. And you can see there, it is completely torn up and ripped to shreds. Probably one or two more good hits on there and it would have broken off. And the problem with that is, if you're unaware of what EVVAP does, it is a very crucial component of your fueling system. If your EVVAP would be get damaged or worst case scenario, ripped off, you're most likely going to throw a check engine light and the truck is most likely going to be put into limp mode, which you don't want when you're out in the middle of nowhere trail riding and off-roading. So, this does not apply to Colorado ZR2 Bison trims. And the reason for that is they come with the AEV fuel tank skid. So the fuel tank skid does also in obviously covering the fuel tank, it does cover this EVVAP bracket. Now AV does sell their skid plates. In fact, I do have their transfer case/transmission skid plate currently on the truck right now. The only problem is it's $550 for their fuel tank skid. And out of the thousands and thousands of miles of off-road that we've done with this ZR2 and all the really extreme trails that we've done, I have never come close to hitting the fuel tank. You can look underneath my truck right now and there is not a mark on the fuel tank. The EVVAP bracket, however, as you just saw recently moments ago, does not suffer that same fate. So, this obviously fixes that issue without spending all that money of $550 on the AEV fuel tank skid. This is a third of the price and it covers the problem that you need. So, now I'm going to go in and show you guys how easy it is to install it. So, what you get in this kit is the aluminum skid plate that you see there. You get a screw included and then you also get a spacer. Now, this is kind of the prototype spacer. There will be an aluminum spacer just like this. So, moving on into the install of the EVVAP skid. Obviously, step one is locating your EVVAP bracket, and that is on the driver's side right in front of your fuel tank here. This is what we're going to be removing. So, in order to remove this, you're going to need a 13 mm socket for this bolt right here. There's one bolt that we need to remove right here. And then there are two nuts that we need to remove that basically have are inside the frame here. So one of the holes that we'll be accessing is this larger one here. You can see that 13 mm nut in there. And then the other one where you see this kind of body mount here in between that is your second back in there your second 13 mm nut that we'll need to remove in order to drop this EVVAP bracket. So, now that we've removed the 13 mm bolt here and the two 13 mm nuts inside the frame, the bracket should now be loose, which is what we need. So, to demonstrate what you're going to need to do, I'm going to use my old bracket that I have here. So, right now, it's mounted to the frame. You're going to push it out away from the frame. And when you push it out, you're going to slide the skid plate up in between the frame and the bracket. And then you'll see the skid plate has two holes there that line up with these two bolts that are embedded in the bracket. So in order to do that, you're just going to slide it up in there. Give it a nice push. And then you'll be able to use the two 13 mm nuts again and tighten them on here. We still have one more step after this. So, you can see the skid plate is now loosely mounted after we pushed it up and put them back on. We also put the two 13 mm nuts back on the threads just very loosely tightened a few couple turns so that way it just holds it in place. Now, what we need to do is put our new bolt and also utilizing the spacer on this end right now. So now on the other side of the skid, we're going to have to put the final bolt through. And what we're going to need first is the supplied spacer that comes in the level up kit. So again, this is a prototype spacer. The finalized production spacer will be an aluminum spacer. So this spacer is going to go in between the skid plate and the bracket. So, it's going to be touching one side's going to be touching the skid plate and the other side is going to be touching the bottom of the bracket. And then once you get that through, you're going to get the supplied longer bolt that comes in the kit. And then you're just going to simply thread that through and tighten it up. So, as you can see here, we are fully installed and in place. As you can see, it looks so good and most importantly offers that much needed protection. Well, I hope you guys found this video informative and helpful. If you are interested in the evap skid, make sure to go check it out in the link down in the description below. You can also use code outlandish overland at checkout and it'll save you 10% off any LevelUp products. If you like the video, make sure to leave a like and subscribe for more awesome content like this. And we'll see you guys in the next video. Hey. Hey. Hey. [Music]