Slider material

I beat the shit out of 2x3x3/16 on a heavy ish 4runner and it laughed.

A good budget option for guys wanting round is 1.5 schd 80. Which is roughly 1 7/8"x.200. Most people don't bend the main runner, so it works well. I've used that on some others rigs I've built with good results.

I also just built a Sami cage, Sliders and rear bumper out of 1.5 chromo. The rock Sliders were only 120, which I was hesitant about, but the owner insisted the chromo would be the difference.

Basically anything more substantial than 120 dom

2x3x1/4 on an 83 toyota pickup. what yer looking to run sounds good.

I am a huge fan of AR plate.

I would look into the option of covering your two wear sides with it. Rocks won’t gouge in it, making the sliders more “slippery”. Not to mention that they will last forever.

I skinned the bottom of my housing diffs with it, noticeable difference.

Good point, I'm really trying to use better materials than mild steel these days. It's usually not much more than the thicker mild equivalent. Ie: 1.5x188 Dom vs 1.5x120 chromo.

What's your preference for regular flate plate? Pickled and oiled?

How would .120" wall tube with solid alum slugged into it fare?

I have a few extra sticks of 2"x.120"DOM in the shop and was thinking it might not get trashed as fast if it thought it was solid.

I'd think it would do pretty well. How much is 1 3/4" solid aluminum though?

You could also grab some 1 3/4x095 and throw that inside.

it would hold up really damned well. the only real complaint with .120 is that it gets crinkled up, being solid would stop that. if the slider is able to get bent and cause a problem with something, then it should have been braced better

$18 a foot for 6061 on McMaster. which is probably on the expensive side because it's McMaster.

On Skittles I used a piece of 3/4” solid round stock to reinforce the 1.25 1.20 wall DOM in the area that you could call a slider on a tube chassis crawler.

If looking straight down the tube, with the outside edge being 3 O’clock, it was welded on in the 4:30 location. Low enough to be the lowest point and up enough to be the highest center point.

I have bent it up from some hard drops but my chassis isn’t dented or beat to fuck because of this piece. Wear points are much easier to replace than chassis pieces.

Online Metals is showing $47.60 for a 6' piece of 1.75"x.095" , and $79.68 for a 6' piece of 1.75" solid 6061 alum.


I like the idea of wear points too. I guess the tough part would be attaching them in a way that replacing them wasn't as much work as replacing the slider itself.

I have a ton of 2x2 .25 wall left over, that I was going to build links with on a previous project. So that is what I'm going to run on my F250. It's cheap and strong and I rather like the look of square sliders. Really the only downside I see is the weight, but on a full size diesel powered crawler it's already a fat pig, no use in worrying about it now.

I cut the rocker panels off my Bronco II and welded in some 2"x6"x3/16" wall A500 rectangular tube directly to the body. A500 has a ~40% higher yield strength than standard A36 tube. It has held up well for me so far with not a single dent despite some hard hits. It is relatively inexpensive (I paid right at $10/ft with tax) and readily available.

A500 does gouge, so in a buggy application, or if you are just constantly on your sliders all the time, it would be worth looking into AR plate.

EDIT: A500 comes in different grades, you want preferably grade C, but B will work too (slightly weaker). The other grades are pretty similar to standard A36.

I’ve always used 2x3 , just seems to fit where the rockers were and offers good float over and less “dig-in” of smaller tube.

Just ordered a couple pieces of 1.75" solid 6061 aluminum. Decided to give stuffing it in 2" x .120" wall DOM a try. Should have a .001" gap to play with. I sure hope this alum shows up straight.