Hooray, Sliders are all in and I think turned out really well.
Here's a quick summary of the install. I'd guess the total time to install was about 6 hours spread across a couple of days.
It should have gone faster but when I sandwiched the driver side slider between the frame and the KDSS hydraulic lines the holes between the valves and the frame offset by about 1/8" which made aligning and reinserting the bolts more difficult. I ended up putting a M8 bolt in one of the frame holes to gently lever the valve and clips into the proper alignment. It's the smallest things that sometimes take the longest time.
I didn't end up drilling (or die grinding) the upper holes- just not enough room. I did use the die grinder to clean up the holes a bit and that worked great.
The Popsicle nut was not too bad, I had been worried about that. Passenger was trivial and I probably got lucky on the driver side. It is somewhat of a blind action because the monster washer needs to fit behind the hydraulic lines and sits flush next to the frame making it difficult to see the orientation of the nut. I ended up using a metric hex socket in the allen head to give more surface to grab by my fingers and to help provide more stable rotation as I adjusted the popsicle with my left hand. With the frame, hydraulic lines, big bolt it's just not a lot of room.
I ended up using 7 rivnuts on the passenger side, shown in yellow. The red markers where I could simply not get enough room with the tools I had to add a rivnut. Plus on the passenger side you get 2 more threaded connections from the parking brake mount and 2 from the fuel tank shield mount (green). The orange marker is where the allen bolt/popsicle nut reinforce.
I used 9 rivnuts on the driver side, which of course I started to photo but must have gotten distracted, I don't have a rivnut only photo of the driver's side.
But here are a few pictures showing the final results on the driver side.
The Allen head bolt was tricky on the driver side, just not a lot of room as you can see. The allen head bolt and washer must fit behind the hydraulic lines (top). The M8 bolt on the bottom is connected to a rivnut and there is another to the right of the support that you can't see in this photo.
Two riv nut holes on the driver side, front. Because of the hydraulic lines I could not drill any of the higher holes. So passenger side gets an extra connection on the top. There is a bolted in bracket securing these hydraulic lines that is hiding up and behind the frame, you can see it in the photo below. It's tough to get to with a regular socket. I ended up using an universal socket. I suspect a low profile socket (or possibly a box wrench) would work as well but it's a tough to get leverage in the space for sure.
These are the hydraulic valves that the instructions say to remove the bolts. On mine, with the slider in place the hydraulic lines shifted to the right about 1/8" which made putting the bolts back into securing the valves more difficult. Taking out the 4 hydrauilic line bolts does make it easier to shift this system away from the frame to squeeze in the slider but I might have only loosened them instead of fully removing them to make the re connection easier. The lines are rigid and there isn't a lot of room to work with. I ended up using a lever to gently nudge the valves back into place and then bolted them back.
The yellow markers are rivnuts, the green is a hydraulic line clip.
Here are the locations of the rivnuts (yellow) and reused fastener locations on the driver side. There is one parking brake connection not shown.
All in all, a fun project. Great quality from Slee.
