Sliders - Jetboy's take on good looking sliders.

[Jetboy]

Turned out to be a LOT more time involved than I had anticipated. They mount via 3 2x2 square tubes. 3 holes each, all bolt on. With weld on you're relying on only one side of the frame. These bolt through to backing plates on the inside. (Yes, it required dropping the fuel tank - not as bad as you might think). In retrospect though due to the PITA that it took to drill all the holes, I'd probably weld on plates with studs in them, then bolt to those.

Anyway, they sit up tight to the body, match generally the aesthetics of the vehicle, and are stout. No problem jacking the whole vehicle on them. I'm also planning to use one side as an air tank for the rear airbags w/o compressor. I might pull them and re-spray them with body plastic matched paint. I had this gray color already. The bottom and all the supports and brackets are sprayed with black rubberized undercoating for durability.

 

[Dell]

They look to fit a tad close to the body work...
both vertically and laterally.

In a perfect off road world they would help...
but in an off camber situation, wedged between two boulders
you might obtain some collateral damages.

They do look bling... if that's what yer going for

for me... coupla' hours on a moderate trail...
they'd look less bling... and the sheet metal damage would be far more obvious

sliders mean little to me...
if they don't defend against sheet metal damage
I really don't care how bling they might look.
IMO... they are a consumable product when used as intended.

good luck with your design

 

[Jetboy]

There was no problem taking the weight of the vehicle on them. Whether they'd "slide" well on rocks, I'm not sure. This is a daily driver, although it does get down to Moab 3-4 times a year. With open diffs, it's not going down any serious trails. Just wanted something that can take the abuse that a stock 4runner is likely to see. Occasional high centering and light dragging - stuff that destroys the factory running boards. I would take the factory ones off every time I'd go to Moab. Got tired of that. These will sit about 2.5" above the level of the factory running boards.

As they are now there's roughly 3/16" clearance between the bracing and the pinch welds - which required offsetting the bracing from the main body and was kind of a PITA. If I had a bender that could handle heavier walled 2x2 tubing that would be really nice, but alas I don't. I'm OK with it touching and lifting the pinch weld, although in a controlled lift with a jack it doesn't touch. Dropping it hard onto them would probably make some more movement. I'm not sure how the pinch weld area would hold up.

I don't like the look of a big gap between the body and sliders. It serves a purpose, makes them easy to build, room for bending etc. Just not what I was going for.

I have an FJ40 on 38.5's for real offroad work. No sliders there - only frame rails. After you cut 4" off the body all around, there's not much left to damage.

 

[KC Yota]

Looks good man! Clean design.

 

[Haggis]

Looks great! I had Demello build me a similar design for my Tacoma that are bolt on and painted black.

 

[Jetboy]

I'm sure I'm not the only one with similar setup. I started looking at the pictures of these: 4Crawler Rock SliderZ and simplified them.

 

[Senor Aguas]

Looks good and really clean, but I agree on the usefulness on the trail. And even on the street, one awesome thing about normal sliders is that you won't get a door ding... I remember someone letting their door slam into my 80 while I was sitting it in. It practically folded their door edge with no damage to my 80.

You could always add a tube without much trouble. You've already done the hard work.

 

[The Jade Bean]

Clean design...looks sharp! It is pretty close to the pinch weld.

-Daniel

Sent from deep in the mountains of Honduras using only sticks and rocks.

 

[skyehunter]

Do you have any pictures of the way it bolts on?

 

[Jetboy]

Do you have any pictures of the way it bolts on?

Not with me right now, but I can describe it pretty well with a 3 minute google sketchup picture set.

Basically it was three of these support braces on each side. They are made this way because it was really easy to make them out of 2x2 square tube cut at 45*. The back is a piece of angle that functions essentially as a large washer to spread the load. The bottom two bolts will hold 95% of the forces involved. The upper bolts are not necessary. If I were to do it again, I would probably just omit the upper bolts, but leave some bracing there as the torque on the brace will put a compressive force on the middle of the frame rail and I suspect it may collapse if you don't spread the load up near the top of the frame rail.


Also, where the gas tank is, there is no angle, just large washers. I dropped the tank and fed the bolts through the frame from the inside, then put the tank back. It's really simple to drop the tank enough for this. 2 minute job.