44 SEPTEMBER 2019 FOUR WHEELER fourwheeler.com
SOURCES
Barnes 4WD
828/551-7616
barnes4wd.com
Low Range 4x4
910/392-3204
lowrange4x4.com
Nitto Tire
nittotire.comPSC Motorsports
817/270-0102
pscmotorsports.com
Rock Krawler
518/270-9822
rockkrawler.com
Trail-Gear
877/494-8697
trail-gear.comTech Universal Sliders
Making Strides & Steps
->
Aside from using them to get in and out of the truck, we don’t have a trail report to give you on
these (yet). However, we will say that we’ve had these sliders in the past under another solid-axle
mini-truck (Danger Ranger anyone?), and they worked really well. In fact, they are probably the only
thing on that particular truck that’s not crinkled from the trail. We still have a good bit of work ahead for
our S-10, but the time in the shop will be paying off very soon.- A good weld starts with prep work. We spent time
with an angle grinder and flap disc getting the chas-
sis down to bare metal. It’s also worth noting that
Trail-Gear ships the sliders with a light oil coating
that will need to be removed before welding. - Once we had the legs in place, we tack-welded
everything and double-checked that the slider was still
level and even. Once we established it was, we burnt it
in using a Miller MIG welder with 0.035-inch wire. - If you’ve read our suspension installment, you might
recall seeing that we left our leaf spring perches in
place. We did this because we had a feeling that our
side-mounted lower control arm link mounts might
be in the way of where we needed a slider support leg
to be. Now that we know how much of the mount we
need to tie into, we can trim down the rest. - Since there’s a fair amount of room under the
cab, we were able to get clean welding passes on the
plate and tubing. Note the orientation of the plate,
as this is ideal for helping to spread out load forces
on the frame. - Chevy didn’t make the Crew Cab S-10s for very
many years, making it more difficult to find rear
doors and beds at the junkyard. This is one of the
reasons we opted to lay our sliders flat. We want as
much push-off protection as possible to keep objects
on the trail away from the body. - The other reason we laid it flat was so it could
function as a step. This truck isn’t exactly easy to get
in and out of, so these serve as a practical upgrade
as well. - After we knocked out the driver side, we repeated
the process on the passenger side. With fewer obsta-
cles, such as the parking brake cables, to tend with,
it went along quickly. We still need to coat the sliders
with paint, but given that the truck has a full to-do list
ahead of it, we’re going to leave that for later. fw
7
9 11
10
8
12
13