I got the sliders on today. The driver's side was a PITA. That side took five hours. The passenger side took less than two hours. The secret is to extend a 16mm wrench to about two feet and use duct tape to hold the bolt and big washer on while pushing it through the two forward holes in the frame. You've also gotta move all the brake lines out of the way. The installation instructions wanted the nut on the inside of the boxed frame for those two forward bolts but no way would that have been possible or reasonable unless you've got scarecrow arms and tiny hands.
These sliders will do fine until someday I weld some sliders on instead. Maybe someday when I fully box the frame and link the rear suspension...
Finished product.
The two bolts at the top of this bracket are the horrible ones to install -- especially on the driver's side. If I was grading a student's design engineering work, I would give this a D+ due to extremely poor assemblability. Yes, the design is easy to produce but wow does it suck to install.
Lots of bolts.
I used a transmission jack to position the sliders for installation.
Before all the fun began 😅
It's taken me about five weekends to install all of the RCI armor that I bought over the holidays. I'm not sure I would DIY again considering what a PITA it was to install most of it. I understand the limitations of bolt on stuff but dang. What a pain.
Next I need to decide on a winch, figure out if I need to strengthen the front bumper assembly, look to see if there's anything else I should do on the front (the two side wing things sticking out from the front frame cross member in particular seem odd), figure out an onboard air situation (probably cut in the missing drivers side bed pocket and put a compressor and tank there), figure out where to mount some amateur, GMRS, CB, and other radios inside the cab and for the antennas, get a U bolt flip kit, and get better spring hangers. Oh and the hitch skid.
But as it is, it should be good to go for most of the stuff I want to do this summer. I can bring a scuba tank to fill tires. The winch would be a nice safety margin.