Alrighty guys and gals, this has been a LOOONG time coming. But I finally got the rock sliders on! Been working a new job where I travel a lot, but also still working my old job so I've been working 7 days a week for the past 6 months or so. Gotta pay for all my home renovations and Expy mods somehow.. Without further ado, lets dive in to the absolute ***** of time that it was to get these damn things on.
So before I could even start measuring everything up and tacking it on, I had to move the e-brake line that was running smack dab in the middle of the frame rail. Riiiiight where I wanted to mount the sliders. That took about an hour on its own. Was a pain to separate the line, then had to drill holes in the body mount brackets to re-run the line on top of the frame rail and out of the way. Below are pictures of the newly ran line. The red circles are where it was, the blue circles are the holes I had to drill to run the lines.
After that I finished drilling out the plates I would bolt to the frame. Decided to go with 1/2 bolts drilled all the way through the frame and plates. Drilled pilot holes than went to the full width, the exact size of the bolts so there wouldn't be any play in them once it was mounted.
Next up I tacked the plates to the frame, then drilled through the existing holes in the plates all the way through the frame. This was not fun. The rocker panels are so low that it was nigh impossible to get the drill in there for the top two bolts of each plate. Ended up drilling a lot of them at an angle unfortunately. Also, the gas tank and fuel filter is stupidly close to the frame, so had to put a sheet of metal behind the frame while I drilled the holes out back there so I wouldn't puncture my tank. Also made getting the nuts on back there a ***** and a half. Had to trim the bolt and grind down a few mm off the nut to get it to fit in there.
Once they were tacked up and drilled out, I put the sliders up on some jack stands and started figuring out where I wanted them to sit. I ended up putting them pretty close in to the doors, with just enough room for them to function as a runner board. If I were to do this again I probably would've put them further out. But there is no way in hell I am ever doing this again. Took two full days to get this done, not including the time it took to make them. Definitely the most difficult mod I've done to my rig so far. If you're thinking about doing this yourself, make sure you REALLY want them, because it is not an easy task.
After they were tacked up, I used an angle grinder to get em off the frame, and welded them up.