BudBuilt Sliders

I have a buddy selling me a set of these for $500. I haven't seen anything about these on this forum about reviews. Any advice would be great. It's .120 HREW steel which I don't know much about. They are also not powder coated. Thanks in advance.

http://budbuilt.com/16-Tacoma-Rock-Sliders_p_577.html

 

@BudBuilt

They are good people and make good stuff. $500 is cheap and you don't have to wait 10 weeks, win/win.

 

I will go check them out. The picture he provided didn't really show the welds on them.

 

Here you go:
Rock Sliders

 

I have a full set of budbuilts on my truck, they are top notch.

Edit: sorry, I read skids instead of sliders! My bad! If Bud’s sliders are as good as his skids they will probably outlast your truck

 

What grade steel did you go with?

 

I didn't know Budbilt made sliders, nice. I have their full set of skids for my 1st gen, quality stuff

 

@Brokinarrow, they are quite new, so that's probably why there is not much talk yet about them. We didn't finish failure testing them till the beginning of October. (We don't just build armor, we get frames and perform crush tests to ensure they truly protect the frame during excessive loads, these sliders actually strengthen the frame's rigidity). They are fastened to the frame with two 3/16" frame plates that provide true clamping force between the slider and the frame rail.

.120 HREW is plenty strong for laying up against trees, earth, lifting the whole truck, things like that. .120 DOM is a better choice for situations where falling onto just the pointy sides of rocks can occur. .120 DOM basically has better dent resistance than HREW. We also make them out of .188 DOM. They are the strongest slider on the market and come with a lifetime warranty. You won't bend, bow, or dent these, if you do, we'll build you new ones for free.

Hopefully that helps, and thanks to @SearArtist, @fjpenguin, @eon_blue for the kind words, we have some very interesting things for the 3rd Gen coming out this year. And if there's anything you guys want made, let us know.

 

That sounds pretty good. You guys make them for 5th gen 4runners too?

 

We do. The materials we use are the same, yet the mounting design is completely different because of the fully boxed Prado 150 frame.

 

Cool! I’m wanting fully bolt on, but I want the L-shaped mounting plates; ie., it has supporting plates on the bottom of the bolt plate that kinda cradles the frame, like what mobtown offroad does on theirs. Do you guys build them that way? If so, I’m interested for sure.

 

We don't use an L-shape bracket if you don't have to. I don't want to open a can of worms with reference other companies sliders, so I'll just say why we don't do it.

We have a line in the shop called "it briefed well." It basically means, just because something looks good, doesn't mean it is good; or it sounded like a good idea, until we tested it.

Lets look at the mounting design of an L-shape, we think that with a fastener on two sides, it will provide a more solid design. And that is true, but it relies on one very big element, that the hole on the bottom of the slider bracket does not give any space between the bracket and the bolt that will go into the frame. We are dealing with thousands of pounds of pressure, and metal that is already bent at a 90º, that is having upward of 15" to 17" of leverage put on it. There is no way to factor in all the variance that Toyota themselves allows to be put into the frame to allow tolerance so tight to see a benefit from an L-shape when there are some many other mounting points. Now on the 5th Gen 4Runner, we do use a L-shape, as there are so few of attaching points that we needed something to allow our sliders not to deflect when we drop our 4Runner from a fork lift onto a rock (its pretty fun actually). Yet on the 3rd Gen Tacoma, we don't even need to go down that road as there are a plethora of great attachment points to utilize. The last thing we want to do is put a big old hole on the bottom of a bracket, for a smaller bolt to go through it, when we know that won't add anything, because when we apply pressure, you will still see that bottom part of the bracket slide to the outside. We engineered the mounting design to sandwich the the frame rail with the thickest plates in the industry. Then we tested, and the frame plates will not pull away from the frame rail. We would have to reduce our mounting design by around 30% to cause deflection, to then need to use a L-shape, and when we did that, they deflected 3º more than our current non L-shape. So why add something if it doesn't help?

So next I would like to talk about clamping force, and this in my favorite actually. We have already gotten a couple questions about why we didn't use a C-channel design. The reasons is because they don't work. I know, bold statement, but please let me explain. The best way to mount something is to not just clamp it to something, but also have the fasteners themselves held in place with no possibility to slide, example, is a simple welded captive nut. It provide clamping force, and it cannot move around, perfect. So if we don't have that, we can use existing holes and put in the biggest bolt that we can fit. Provided the plate on the back is beefy enough to support the load, the bolt has very little room for movement and clamping force is provided, pretty good. Okay stay with me now, because its going to get fun...

For a c-channel to work right clamping force needs to there. So if you can take a boxed piece of metal and slide it in a c-channel of metal by hand, then drop bolt from the c-channel to the boxed piece, there is no clamping force. It will still move around and deflect like crazy. We saw that a lot on a popular rear bumper for the FJ Cruiser, same design, and we had to fix a lot of them that came into the shop to actually make the bumper mount solidly. It's engineering 101, and the best way to really stress the reason is the "by hand" statement. If the c-channel and boxed attachment are bolted together, and bolt can be dropped in by hand, even if when that bolt is then fastened, what is provide clamping force to the frame? Nothing, there's nothing there. When force is applied to the slider, theres so much play between the frame and the boxed attachment that it won't provide anything. If it could, there would be no way to drop a bolt in by hand, and a bolt could never provide enough clamping force to not allow sliding.

Then lets say the boxed attachment was so securely fitted within the frame rail that it did provide an increase in strength. The Tacoma frame very gradually transitions from a fully boxed, to an open c-channel. The absolutely last thing any one would want to do it abruptly take that smooth transition from fully boxed, to open c-channel, to immediate fully boxed (the boxed attachment), and the back to open c-channel. We would just be introducing an unneeded and damaging stress point. Building upon the Tacoma's flexy frame design was very obvious to us. If it was a 4Runner/FJ Cruiser/Land Cruiser with a fully boxed frame, it would be a different story, but its not, it's a Toyota truck frame.

Another way to look at it is the Tacoma's rear axle. U-bolts are dropped down with a bracket on the bottom side, sand-witching the leaf pack and the axle housing, then nuts provide clamping force to hold everything together. That's how our slider mounting design works. The c-channel design we see in the industry would be like taking the u-bolt, and instead of having it clamping the leaf pack and axle housing together, it was inserted from the side, and a bracket secured on the other side. Now if you can slide that u-bolt in by hand, imagine the slack that can happen between those components, it would be far too excessive. We have a design that allows a c-channel and boxed attachment to be used, and then another element of it provide clamping force to the frame, but it still is nowhere near the capability of our two 3/16" frame full frame plates with 5/8" bolt design.

My intent was not to upset anyone, just sharing why we do things. We are formally educated mechanical engineers and specialize in materials science and failure analysis with over 3 decades of experience and a combined 6 decades of hard-core rock crawling experience. None of the sliders we make across a vary large offering are the same. Each one is unique to make the most of what we are dealing with. We don't get to design the truck, we just get to work with the canvas that we get, and enhance it.

Please feel free to question anything, we don't mind it, we have a deep passion for this and we are not perfect, but we do test excessively, we wheel hard, we live it, and we think it shows, we are constantly refining designs, we change things all the time. We prize ourselves as the closest you can get to a custom shop without having to bring your truck into the shop. We are are here for you guys, so if you want a feature, we will add it, makes no difference to us. When you place an order, we get up from the computer, walk to the back of the shop, grab raw material and start building. So whatever you want, just ask, but we will always ensure its is absurdly strong.

 

Wow, thanks for the in-depth answer! This is a lot of good info, and I do appreciate your taking the time to give such detailed info. I will keep this in mind.

 

I like this answer...and that you are in NC (from there, just don’t live there). I’ll be peeking around on your website now. Thx.

 

Blew my mind. I was debating getting sliders and i just missed your free shipping promo! Guess ill be waiting until the next one. Heard nothing but outstanding things from @BudBuilt

 

can you provide us with photos of how they look mounted onto the bottom of the frame? i'm pretty sure other TW users would like to see how it looks underneath as well... bolted on and everything..

 

hahaha. Priced these out. Living in Alaska, the sliders are $695.00, shipping cost $937.00.... One more year here...

 

where u at in ak josh

 

Kodiak Island

 

yeah that sucks lol