Rock Sliders Installation Issue with Fabrication

Looking for advice and/or opinions on this, any are welcome.

I bought some rock sliders from Rocky Road Outfitters because in my opinion they look really great and are super low profile. The problem with them is they drilled some holes into the frame of the rock sliders too low, and now this is where I have to drill:

You can see the predrilled hole from the template contained with the sliders is not centered, and is not contained entirely by the pinch weld. This is just one example. There are maybe 5-6 holes I need to drill into the pinch weld and 4-5 of them look about like this.

Now, I've never installed sliders before.. Never looked closely at how they are installed, but it seems to make sense to bolt them to this pinch weld, even though there seems like there is very little margin for error. But I believe if I drill this hole it will not properly support the weight of the sliders and could end up bending down causing the sliders to hang down or droop after taking some drops or after time and gravity.

Here is a better idea of where they drilled the hole on the slider frame. The frame is supposed to sit just behind the pinch weld:


You can see that the hole was drilled at the very bottom of this square piece.

My next step was to email Rocky Road outfitters, they accepted and admitted this was a defect, and recommended I re-drill the holes manually. Which ended up being a bit of a shit show because I could not make a perfectly vertical or square hole into the frame, so here's an example of what one of the holes looks like:


This hole is pretty much in the center of the bar, but now at the very top of this reinforcement plate. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

This particular hole looks fine on the slider, but then you take the metal band out and try to match the hole onto the pinch weld and it looks too high:


My worry now with this hole is that the bolt head will not seat properly against the pinch weld and will also scar up the body there; scratching the paint and potentially developing rust down the road.

Here is another hole that I cant even match up from the metal strip:


So, like I said.. Shit show. Not to mention drilling through that much steel completely dulled my one good bit that size.

My options now are to YOLO and just drill, or maybe drive my ass all the way to Salt Lake to Rocky Road and ask for new ones.


What would you recommend? Drill? Re-Drill?

I've already contacted the seller and provided all of this information. They have not responded. I'm sitting here with $800 of some pretty sweet steel in my garage but I cant use it and I don't want to cause damage to the truck. I also dont want to make permanent modifications like this if I'm not 100% confident.

Sidenote:
I have a welder, I'm not that great at it, but maybe I could put it to use...?

 

Did you buy them new?

Left side and right side flipped around?

 

Fuck driving over 500 miles. I'd tell them to have a shipper pick them up at your house with a full refund.

Then buy the ones most popular on here.

 

Who built these nightmares... I have not seen a slider with such a complicated installation. Holy refund batman, get this boy a check.

 

Agreed, you paid for a product that was supposed to be ready for install you should not have to go through with modifying due to there quality control and potentially end up with sagging pieces of steel or when needed and you land on them then end up doing damage to your truck.

 

I'm not exactly sure what I am seeing in the photos, but it doesn't look Kosher. What are your return options? How did you pay for these?

 

I’m in the camp of return them for your moolah. You now added at least one more hole, so that canary may be out of the cage.

I received a roof rack that wasn’t to my spec. In frustration over the long wait and just wanting it done, I installed. 8 hours later I regretted it. The vendor offered to produce the custom rack I ordered at no cost and pay return freight on the first. I didn’t want to wait another 10 weeks for that so took an in stock design that was close to what I wanted. 2 weeks after installing it (great product) I regretted not waiting the 10 weeks again. Again, vendor would have made it right but I was just to anxious and didn’t want to wait.

Moral: wait and get what you wanted first.

 

I don't have sliders...no need for them, but I was under the impression you could use them as a jack point to jack your truck up.

No way I'd do that with those with the fucked up holes.

 

Jeebus, those look like hot garbage and not remotely designed to fit the Tacoma. Drilling through the pinch weld to mount them is a horrible thing for multiple reasons. Are they supposed to be no-drill? You realize you could have driven an hour to RCI and got sliders that bolt right up for probably less $. Return those and get something from a vendor that has a clue what they are doing. DO NOT DRILL YOUR FRAME FOR THOSE SLIDERS!!! There are plenty of open holes in a Tacoma frame and you should be able to bolt decent sliders up without drilling.

Also, I live in SLC, UT and have never heard of Rocky Road for Tacoma sliders. And I looked before I ordered my BAMF sliders.

 

Return! Do not install. Not sure why you'd want a rock slider that mounts to the pinch weld. This whole thing has bad news written all over it.

 

This is absolutely not kosher.

Whoever thought that locking together the frame of your truck and the cab of your truck with a slider is in no position to sell anybody anything.

Run. And run fast. Terrible design.

 

No they are not flipped around, this was my thought as well but I triple checked.


Thanks for all the feedback, I was definitely trying to do my due dilligence as a customer but these are my first sets of sliders so I didnt know if mounting to the pinch weld was normal, it sounds like it's not. Glad I posted here. I will send them another email and see what they say.

 

Probably a fabricator used to doing Jeeps. Most Jeep sliders are done this way...

 

These are the worst sliders made for a Tacoma on the market! This has been discussed in a few other threads about this company. Just like the dude above me said, they are probably used to building them for jeeps. Body on frame trucks need separation between sliders and rocker panel to allow for flex and deflection. Also, the legs on those sliders are made out of like 1.25” square legs. They’re frickin weak sauce! If they were built like a regular slider they’d bend pretty quickly. If I recall correctly, the last time I looked at those they didn’t have any gussets on the legs either to prevent deflection and bending. Get your money back and go anywhere else

 

sorry can't help w/ your situation but I just visited their site and holy crap that thing is hard to navigate

 

Fuck it. Weld it on.

 

No. These sliders are garbage. Terrible design. Very weak. Would be welding garbage to an awesome truck

 

Weld it on the roof.

 

Did you try to align it?

 

Your sliders are designed very different from the OP's. Not quite relevant to his problem.