DIY Bolt-on Rock Sliders for 3rd Gen Tacoma (2 Viewers)

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AKA How to convert weld-on sliders to bolt on.

Rock sliders are an important part of body armor to protect your rocker panels and doors. You could just buy them and there are many vendors out there that make an excellent product, but this is ih8mud.com and over here we like to make things so that we can screw them up just the way we want so that we won’t have anybody else to blame. If you aren’t confident of your welding ability, then just buy them because you don’t want them to fall off and go through somebody’s wind shield. That could ruin their day. You can choose to either weld them directly to the frame or bolt them on using either the existing holes in the frame or drilling new ones. I chose to use the existing holes to bolt them on because I didn’t like the idea of welding or drilling on my frame while it is under warranty. I didn’t reinvent the wheel here and I looked at the bolt on sliders available from several vendors and they all use the same basic approach with some differences in details. The sliders are welded to a plate that is bolted to the frame.

When looking at the frame, the first thing you notice is the 4 large (17mm) rivet heads that secure the driveshaft bearing cross member to the frame. The plate needs to be drilled to clear the rivet heads (indicated by arrow heads on the first two pictures) so it will fit flat against the frame. The other noteworthy thing is that the front part of the frame is plated with gussets so that the surface is raised by 5 mm compared to the rest of the frame. A single long plate will not fit flat, so most vendors have used a separate plate for the front section.

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The pictures show the holes and rivets for the passenger side of the frame. The nice thing about the Tacoma frame is that the holes are the same on the driver’s side, so once you mark their location on one plate, you can drill both sides at one time. Some of the holes are used to mount Toyota parts, like wire junction boxes and clips that hold the brake lines and wire harness to the frame. There are two large rectangular holes and one large round hole (indicated by arrows in the first two pictures). The front cross member has a large rectangular hole (indicated by the two arrows underneath the frame. These holes will be used to mount the slider plate with ½ inch grade 8 bolts and nuts and they will use large (2 x 2) washers on the inside made from 3/16 steel strap.

1. The first step in fabricating the plate is to cut a piece of 3/16 plate that is 5 (or 6) inches wide that is 42 - 45 inches long. I used 5 inch x 42 inches because I found a piece that was 84 inches long in the remnant bin at my local steel supplier. I cut it in two to make the two 42 inches long section. The rear end of the plate ends at the beginning of the curved part of the frame where the frame goes over the rear axle. This is approximately 14 inches behind the rear rivet heads.

2. Locate the holes for the 4 rivet heads. Measure their location accurately and mark them on the plate and drill them. The rivet heads are 17 mm in diameter, so I used a ¾ inch (19 mm) Silver and Deming bit, but you could also use a hole saw. The rivet and hole locations are the same on the driver’s and passenger’s side, so you can drill both plates at the same time.

3. Place the plate on the passenger side and clamp in place. Then trace the location of all of the other holes. Some holes will only be used on the driver’s side, but you might as well drill them at the same time. Any empty hole can be used with a 3/8 inch grade 8 bolt to increase strength. You may also want to drill the holes after welding the sliders on to the plate because welding will warp the plate and this might require slotting of some of the holes. I drilled all of these holes ½ inch even though many of the frame holes are smaller than that. This gives some slop for warping of the plate during welding. Many vendors slot the holes. I ended up slotting the holes at the ends anyway because of warping. The ends of the plate at the bottom extend downward by about 1/8 inch after welding, so you might want to drill the holes at the end 1/8 inch higher to compensate.

4. Drill the holes in the bottom plate (not shown) for the bottom rivet head (19 mm) and the 10mm x 1.25 bolt that holds the cross member. I used a piece of ¼ inch x 2 inch wide strap that I had on my junk pile. Three inch wide would work better. This will be welded later to the vertical plate. If you are not going to drill any holes in the bottom of your frame, this piece only needs to be a few inches long so that it uses the bottom bolt to hold the plate on. The lower the amount of welding on the bottom of the plate, the less it will warp. Tack weld the bottom plate for now.

5. Make the front plate that will be bolted to the 2 inch long rectangular hole in the front crossmember. I used another piece of ¼ x 2 inch strap to extend from the bottom of the square hole in the crossmember. It is 7 inches long and will be trimmed after welding. I drilled two half inch holes spaced 1.5 inches apart for half inch grade 8 bolts. I used another 4 inch long piece of the ¼ x 2 inch strap for the inside of the hole and welded two grade 8 nuts on one side. This assembly can be inserted into the frame by the hole in the rear side of the cross member and moved with your finger to position it to insert the bolts from the outside. I bolted up the 7 inch piece and welded it to a 6 x 6 inch piece of 3/16 plate to form the front part of the bolt on plate as shown in picture 5.

 

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6. Now that you have completed the plate that will be bolted to the frame, it is time to decide what kind of sliders you want. You can either buy the raw steel tubes and fabricate them yourself, or you can buy a kit of pre-cut and bent tube that needs welding or you can buy a partially welded assembly that is designed to be welded to your frame. There are a lot of choices. When I made sliders for my LX450, I used a simple 11 ga 2 x 4 HREW tube. This would be the cheapest option and the total cost would be about $100 if you can use remnant tube at $0.80 a pound. You could also use tube, but then you would either need to bend the tube or miter the ends. Schedule 40 pipe is also an option and is often used for hand rails. Unlike tubing, 90 and 45 degree weld-on elbows are available to make the curves. At the high end are preassembled sliders that just need to be welded on. I went with a weld on kit made by Trail Gear that I got from Amazon. It is 78 inches long and comes with 4 weld on legs. It is made from 1035 alloy steel DOM tube which is substantially stronger than 1010 HREW or even 1020 DOM tube. The tube was marked “USA”. It requires minimal fitting. Just cut the legs to the proper size, decide what angle you want the sliders set at and weld them up. Just the DOM tube alone would cost nearly as much from my local steel supplier as the assembly shipped by Amazon.

7. Next step is to bolt the adaptor plates on, locate the legs of the slider on the plate and tack weld. I chose to put the front edge of the slider at the joint between the rocker panel and the rear of the front fender. The legs are spaced 8, 20, 38 and 57 inches front to back so that the legs clear the holes in the plate and frame. The nice thing about the Tacoma is that the frame is parallel to the bottom of the rocker panel, so you can use square cuts. On my truck, the distance from the frame to the pinch weld is 5 mm longer on the passenger side. I located the legs 1 inch from the bottom of the frame, which gives a gap of about a half inch between the slider tube and the rocker pinch weld. Note that the front leg is 5 mm shorter than the others because the frame is 5 mm thicker at the front. I used a square to measure the length of the legs and mark their location on the plate. The next step is to decide what angle if any you want the sliders to point upward. Some commercial sliders are 10 or 20 degrees angled up. I chose 5 degrees and tack welded the legs to the sliders. Next, I put the slider on jack stands to position it and then secured it with a ratchet strap and tack welded it. It was windy and blew away the shielding gas before I noticed and turned the flow up, so I ground out the bad tacks before welding it up. Then I removed the sliders and finished welding it out. I noticed that just welding the legs on the plate warped it by nearly 3/16 inch, which necessitated elongating the top part of the holes nearest the ends of the plate. If you fully weld the bottom strip, it will warp even more, so weld just enough weld to secure it, like 1 inch of weld every 6 inches. I also welded gussets on the top of the legs. Be sure to notch the front gusset to clear the wiring harness (on the driver's side) and to clear the body on both sides.

8. After welding, I cleaned it with solvent, then detergent and water and dried it. I painted them with Rustoleum red primer and let it dry for a day and then shot the top coat with Rustoleum Gloss Black Enamel to match my midnight black metallic.

9. Bolt the sliders on. If you are doing this alone, put a bolt in the rear hole and fasten it loosely to the frame with a nut. Then you can just swing the front end up and put the other bolts in. I used a piece of 2 inch strap as a washer for the large frame holes. You need to bolt all of the junction boxes and things back on the frame and install the clips to retain the brake lines. Make sure that the brake lines are well clear of the bolts on the inside of the frame. I used 5 grade 8 half inch bolts per side. For the center round hole on the driver side, insert the bolt and washer plate from the inside, because there is a wiring box covering the hole on the inside of the frame. The bolt head and 3/16 washer are thick enough so that they are very close to rubbing on the bottom of the electrical box, so I put a washer on each of the two studs to space it out about .045 inch. I also used new grade 10.9 10 mm x 1.25 x 30 mm bolts on the bottom of the frame. Is this strong enough? Only you can decide. Each grade 8 bolt is rated for 22,000 pounds in tension and 18,000 pounds in shear, so theoretically you should be able to pick the truck with just one bolt. I can lift both wheels by jacking from the slider without any obvious deflection, so it looks like it will take most normal abuse. It is worth noting that the 3/16 plate is thicker than the frame. I asked my son who has a master’s degree in mechanical engineering about whether the 5 bolts would be enough and he said “probably” although it is a question of whether the slider or frame will bend first.



10. Done. Total cost was $20 for the plate, $20 for the hardware, $10 for paint, $280 for the slider kit. It took about 8 hours, not including the paint drying time. Total weight is about 100 pounds for both. You will also notice that for only about $350 more, you can buy fully fabricated sliders that are ready to bolt on, but you might have to wait a couple of months and also pay for delivery if the vendor is not local to you. Another way to look at it is the $350 you saved by doing it yourself could help pay for a nice welder. If this kind of thing isn’t fun for you, just buy the ones you like the best.