Welcome Visitor! Please take a few seconds and Mazanger
New Member
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2012
- Messages
- 13
- Reaction score
- 2
- Points
- 0
- Vehicle Year
- 1994
- Make / Model
- Mazda
- Transmission
- Manual
For my first post I decided that rather than starting a thread about something that should be searched about I would contribute something that is(hopefully) beneficial to other members on the forum! I searched around and couldn't find much on designs for sliders specifically for our trucks, so I decided to come up with my own design and "wing it". If you have any questions feel free to PM me!
Material list:
40' of 1" x 1.5" x 120 Square tube
15' of 1.5" x 1.5" x 120 Square tube
8 3" x 4" x 3/16" plates
8 2" x 3" trianlges(gussets)
About a gagillion pounds of welding wire.(honestly I used about 5 pounds of .035 flux core going through a Lincoln 3200 HD without gas)
24 Grade 8 7/16" Bolts, flat washers, lock washers, and nuts. The bolts were about 1" or maybe 1.25"
1/4" and 7/16" Black oxide drill bits.
Playing around with some designs, I wanted the sliders to be flat. I know this doesn't offer as much protection but the cab on these trucks is very rounded in the middle and I am more concerned about rubbing with trees than encountering boulders on the trail. I also wanted them to be steps to get in and out of the truck bed.
More playing around
This is the design I came up with, the sliders ended up being exactly 6" wide, all the angles are 45 degrees.
Welding it together.. No turning back now!
I picked 1.5" x 1.5" for the legs for a reason. I notched the ends of the legs so that the sliders would fit in there, allowing more surface area to weld together.
This is how the legs sit on the sliders. Obviously this means I could get hung up on rocks a bit easier, I knew this going in to it. Again, my truck is not a rock crawler and probably won't ever be, so I'm not too concerned about this.
This is the plates that attach the sliders to the frame. Ignore the really awful flux core welding. Especially the particularly ugly job on the leg in the back! They are 3" x 4" x 3/16" plates. I drilled them first with a 1/4" bit and then with a 7/16" bit. Building the legs is BY FAR THE HARDEST PART OF THIS BUILD. You have to pay attention to how the sliders will sit on the frame relative to the truck body because THE FRAME IS NOT STRAIGHT. It starts out wider by the rear wheels and narrows in near the front. This means the legs in the front have to be longer than the legs in the back. MEASURE TWICE CUT ONCE!
To make sure the legs ended up the right length. I mocked up the sliders with the FRONT leg at the distance I wanted(use lots of tack welds here!). I then got the slider as straight as I could relative to the body and then measured and cut the slider for all the way in the back. I completely welded up these and bolted them firmly to the frame. I then measured and cut the middle two sliders, making sure that they were just the right length. This would be a good time to mention that I did not feel like removing a half full gas tank from the truck. which meant I had to weld the rear two legs to the frame. I wanted them to be completely removable but cutting two welds is better than cutting 8. For measuring the legs keep this in mind. The front will bolt in but the back one you will need to be able to get it as close to the frame as possible. If either of the two middle legs are just barely too long the back leg will sit too far off the frame to make strong enough welds. You COULD experiment with doubling up on plates, but I preferred not to. I made sure the front leg was bolted in, pressed the back leg as close to the frame as possible, and made the most accurate measurement for the 3rd leg(second closest to the rear because it also has to be welded in) and a hair short on the second closest to the front(because it would be bolted in and I preferred it to be a little short than long which would hold the rear legs from sitting flat on the frame when I went to weld it)
Cleaned up and ready to paint! Note that the legs are at different spacing. This is due to me mocking up the drivers side first, starting with one of the middle legs dead center and measuring out 12" from the CENTER of each leg. This caused problems when I went to the passenger side and found that the transmission cross member was bolted to the outside of the frame rather than the front. I set the spacing for the passenger side at 16" from the center of the slider. Wider is better anyways.
My friend often falls out of his Toyota when he steps on his trail gear sliders and slips. I wanted to use these a lot as steps so I decided to coat them with rubberized undercoating and then spray bedliner over the top. It has been raining a lot here and even after 3 days of drying I found that the under coating was not sticking to the metal very well. This could be due to it being too humid or the metal not being rough enough. I will progressively spray it with bedliner and hope that it does a better job of sticking to the metal.
This is how welding to the frame went. Not too bad and it's not going anywhere!
All done! Drivers side
Passengers side.
Tell me what you guys think!
Material list:
40' of 1" x 1.5" x 120 Square tube
15' of 1.5" x 1.5" x 120 Square tube
8 3" x 4" x 3/16" plates
8 2" x 3" trianlges(gussets)
About a gagillion pounds of welding wire.(honestly I used about 5 pounds of .035 flux core going through a Lincoln 3200 HD without gas)
24 Grade 8 7/16" Bolts, flat washers, lock washers, and nuts. The bolts were about 1" or maybe 1.25"
1/4" and 7/16" Black oxide drill bits.
Playing around with some designs, I wanted the sliders to be flat. I know this doesn't offer as much protection but the cab on these trucks is very rounded in the middle and I am more concerned about rubbing with trees than encountering boulders on the trail. I also wanted them to be steps to get in and out of the truck bed.
More playing around
This is the design I came up with, the sliders ended up being exactly 6" wide, all the angles are 45 degrees.
Welding it together.. No turning back now!
I picked 1.5" x 1.5" for the legs for a reason. I notched the ends of the legs so that the sliders would fit in there, allowing more surface area to weld together.
This is how the legs sit on the sliders. Obviously this means I could get hung up on rocks a bit easier, I knew this going in to it. Again, my truck is not a rock crawler and probably won't ever be, so I'm not too concerned about this.
This is the plates that attach the sliders to the frame. Ignore the really awful flux core welding. Especially the particularly ugly job on the leg in the back! They are 3" x 4" x 3/16" plates. I drilled them first with a 1/4" bit and then with a 7/16" bit. Building the legs is BY FAR THE HARDEST PART OF THIS BUILD. You have to pay attention to how the sliders will sit on the frame relative to the truck body because THE FRAME IS NOT STRAIGHT. It starts out wider by the rear wheels and narrows in near the front. This means the legs in the front have to be longer than the legs in the back. MEASURE TWICE CUT ONCE!
To make sure the legs ended up the right length. I mocked up the sliders with the FRONT leg at the distance I wanted(use lots of tack welds here!). I then got the slider as straight as I could relative to the body and then measured and cut the slider for all the way in the back. I completely welded up these and bolted them firmly to the frame. I then measured and cut the middle two sliders, making sure that they were just the right length. This would be a good time to mention that I did not feel like removing a half full gas tank from the truck. which meant I had to weld the rear two legs to the frame. I wanted them to be completely removable but cutting two welds is better than cutting 8. For measuring the legs keep this in mind. The front will bolt in but the back one you will need to be able to get it as close to the frame as possible. If either of the two middle legs are just barely too long the back leg will sit too far off the frame to make strong enough welds. You COULD experiment with doubling up on plates, but I preferred not to. I made sure the front leg was bolted in, pressed the back leg as close to the frame as possible, and made the most accurate measurement for the 3rd leg(second closest to the rear because it also has to be welded in) and a hair short on the second closest to the front(because it would be bolted in and I preferred it to be a little short than long which would hold the rear legs from sitting flat on the frame when I went to weld it)
Cleaned up and ready to paint! Note that the legs are at different spacing. This is due to me mocking up the drivers side first, starting with one of the middle legs dead center and measuring out 12" from the CENTER of each leg. This caused problems when I went to the passenger side and found that the transmission cross member was bolted to the outside of the frame rather than the front. I set the spacing for the passenger side at 16" from the center of the slider. Wider is better anyways.
My friend often falls out of his Toyota when he steps on his trail gear sliders and slips. I wanted to use these a lot as steps so I decided to coat them with rubberized undercoating and then spray bedliner over the top. It has been raining a lot here and even after 3 days of drying I found that the under coating was not sticking to the metal very well. This could be due to it being too humid or the metal not being rough enough. I will progressively spray it with bedliner and hope that it does a better job of sticking to the metal.
This is how welding to the frame went. Not too bad and it's not going anywhere!
All done! Drivers side
Passengers side.
Tell me what you guys think!
Last edited:
Great first post.... I think it's going to be hard for you to keep up the quality of your posts 
.
