Bender gets JW off-road rock rails to sliiiiide on (1 Viewer)

[maxmileage]

Here’s some pics of some JW Off-road rock rails “in the raw” to sanded and prepped for paint, to painted in flat black rattle can Rust-O, and installed.

The rails showed up well packaged and not damaged. I ordered them in the raw so I could paint them with something I could use as touch up later after wear and tear, like the Bud Built skids I recently installed. The Budbuilt are F ing precision work by the way. Great fit and thoughtful design.
Unlike the Budbuilt, the rails came truly “in the raw”. No prep whatsoever. They even still had the date stamp on the steel, 06/17/22.
The BB stuff showed up basically ready for paint. Not saying I expected the rails to be prepped for paint, but that is a nice touch from BB. Just my observation.

Back to the rails.

I wire brushed and sanded. Then I wiped it down with acetone

I did a couple coats of primer, 48 hr cure.
Then did a couple coats of paint, another 48 hr cure.
One final coat and then installed after one more 48 hr cure.

No install instructions for the 460 as far as I could find on the JW web site. They have instructions for the 470, but not the same kdss unit/line configuration.
I began the install basically feeling my way. There wasn’t any interference from the kdss guards/skid plates, but the front guard needed to be removed during install to allow for a mounting bolt to be inserted. The aft kdss lines had to be freed up by removing the 12 mm bolts that hold them in place. The rails come with bolts to replace these. Removed bolts on the lines allows for just enough flex on the lines to slide the mounting surface of the rock sliders up and underneath. I took my time and slowly worked it up under the lines with a floor jack as I balanced and guided it up as smoothly and gently as I could. Got it close and then persuaded it a few times with the rubber mallet. Bolts lined right up on everything except for one that was impossible because the kdss bracket it needed to go through forced the bolt to kick off at an angle. I left that one out for now. I will have to either move or remove the bracket in order to have a chance at getting the bolt in. Not sure how they got it in there on their test vehicle, directions would help there, but I will get it figured out.

Passenger side took like 5 minutes. Cake!

Overall, very nice me thinks. Should be protecting Benders shiny metal ass for years to come!

 

[mudwagon]

Looks great! I did similar but last 2 coats were raptor liner. Highly recommend if you ever re-do the paint. I just installed mine a couple weeks ago and had a small issue with KDSS lines. Were you able to bolt the KDSS lines on the slider? My holes did not line up and was unable to bolt them. My response from JW was "it's fine"....lol. Doesn't appear to be a structural issue as I raised the whole vehicle up with 2 less bolts, just makes me wonder how well engineered anything is when 2 bolts don't fit and the response is basically "just send it". Otherwise I love the sliders, coverage and function as steps/sliders.

 

[maxmileage]

Looks great! I did similar but last 2 coats were raptor liner. Highly recommend if you ever re-do the paint. I just installed mine a couple weeks ago and had a small issue with KDSS lines. Were you able to bolt the KDSS lines on the slider? My holes did not line up and was unable to bolt them. My response from JW was "it's fine"....lol. Doesn't appear to be a structural issue as I raised the whole vehicle up with 2 less bolts, just makes me wonder how well engineered anything is when 2 bolts don't fit and the response is basically "just send it". Otherwise I love the sliders, coverage and function as steps/sliders.

One of the kdss line bolts wouldn’t line up because the mounting bracket on the kdss line was causing the bolt to go at an angle. I left it out for now but will attempt to get the bolt in by moving or removing the kdss line bracket. The others all lined up perfectly. Seems stout enough. ? We will see though, right?

 

[r2m]

Just a suggestion, you may want to add some traction tape or some sort of traction material to your sliders.
They can be very slippery when wet, snow or muddy. I just got a roll of black skateboard traction tap from Amazon and it works great!

 

[maxmileage]

Just a suggestion, you may want to add some traction tape or some sort of traction material to your sliders.
They can be very slippery when wet, snow or muddy. I just got a roll of black skateboard traction tap from Amazon and it works great!

I have some non skid tape like you speak of, and have thought about using it. I had rock rails on my last rig, WK2, and I do agree they can get a bit slippy, but never added it to those. The matte finish hopefully will be a little more grippy than gloss and there is a slight (10 degree?) up pitch to these rails which helps keep the feet on. But, I am definitely thinking about it. I will probably have to slip and whack my shin one good time to make it happen though.

 

[maxmileage]

One of the kdss line bolts wouldn’t line up because the mounting bracket on the kdss line was causing the bolt to go at an angle. I left it out for now but will attempt to get the bolt in by moving or removing the kdss line bracket. The others all lined up perfectly. Seems stout enough. ? We will see though, right?

Got that last bolt in this morning! Just had to widen out the hole in the kdss line bracket a bit and switched out the washer that came with the kit for a smaller one I had in the bin. Good luck with yours. If you need any help with it, let me know and I can try to help out wherever I can.
I wanted to get ALL of them in there since the driver side obviously has less surface attached than the passenger. That passenger side is not going ANYWHERE!
One other thing I did during install on kdss side is once I had a few bolts loosely in place, I took the jack out and pulled the rock rail as far down on the bolts as I could. This helped to get those kdss line brackets to line up better, since they were on the low side of the rock rail bolt holes, and allowed me to get the forward one in without any modification. The rear would have lined right up if there were no bracket there being pressed up by the support beam on the rock rail. But, like I said, after some widening of the bracket bolt hole I was able to just get it started in there. Here’s a pic of the problem bolt after install.