Stainless steel sliders

If you're doing fill plates, bolt ons might be a better option. Especially since the plates are more so for sliders used as a step. As you can see, I use ladder grip tape for the ice and rain.

You're right. Too many small places to clean up.

 

316 Stainless sliders would be extreamly expensive and the only option for SS if you was them to stay looking that way. It's not something we would ever do here. At todays metal pricing any good shop that works with SS making a quality one off set would be well over $2500 to fabricate 316 bolt on sliders and that's being frugal.

 

Thick aluminum tube or pipe, and bolt on. Light and cheap. Then AL diamond plate. Fancy fancy

 

So if armorers could make a steel suit last for hundreds of years, through the annealing, quenching, and then tempering process, then that's what we're missing here for the mild steel sliders. Strong, ductile, and granular structure which resists granular corrosion.

Just need a huge furnace, water tub, and oil tub. Piece of cake.

 

Wow, such a discussion! Almost like hitting a nerve. So many relevant points being made by all, it must be why we love this forum stuff. Allow me to address some of the things written. Where I live, road crews use sand with salt mixed in, mostly dirt roads. Last thing I want to do is wash out my undercoating in the middle of winter. I wash out salt and sand in spring and re-apply since mud season is salty mud for a few weeks. Wash out and re-apply in late fall. Just seemed a good idea to not put oil on a set of sliders intended to be stepped on.

 

Another option is to have Line-x applied to the sliders. The Line-x will encapsulate the sliders. Mine are holding up well but I do not off Road nor do I get the salt you do.

 

Yes I'm with you on this one. Thick aluminum.

Fully polished 316 stainless would look trick but the real trick would be paying for them haha material costs are nuts right now - if you can find the material.

 

If you make it out

If you really want to make them stainless, 316/316L will do the trick. Lower 300 series stainless don't hold up to salt spray as well. 316/316L is weldable, to itself and carbon steels as well.

That being said, if I were going to build sliders, I would go with chromoly (someone mentioned 4130 earlier which I've worked a lot with and is a great steel for rigid structures like sliders) and then just be prepared for some light standing and 30 minutes with a rattle can on the spring. You could even use mild steel which would be cheaper (and heavier).

 

Yeah....but then you live in California.

 

I like shiny! Schedule 40 304 stainless pipe will work fine. I’m in upstate New York. Pushbar has been on my truck since 2015 and held up to an 80mph head on deer strike. I polished it to mirror finish and used a boating product called shark skin, it’s about time I give it another coat.

 

Sand blaster will get any nook and cranny. Also, I work on boats, in my experience it's called stainless and not stain-never because nothing is 100%, and small nicks or gouges in stainless and it'll rust some

 

Couldn't pay me to live there. I live one state over from you...

 

I've had enough with the ignorance of California's qualities. See ya'.

 

Yeah, 316 would be overkill for this application. 304 would be fine. 316 has added moly to make it more corrosion resistant. It's considered a marine grade and is what is used for any of the stainless jewelry that reputable companies make. The human body is a hell of a corrosive environment too.

304 would hold up great.

 

Pics?!

 

Stainless isn't a strong metal for this kind of tubing. It will likely bend or show damage a DOM tunnel won't show. So while I understand the rust issues. I can't understand using this metal with how soft it tends to be.

 

there's a lot of mental and financial rust there

do a good job painting sliders
unbolt and re-paint in 10 years
/thread

 

Has anyone mentioned how heavy stainless is?

 

Soft? LOL

Yes

 

A good paint job, rust protectant coat on the mounting legs/frame side, and maybe some diy mini mud flaps at the front and rear if really super concerned, and they’d be good to go. Touch up is as easy as a little wire wheel and rattle can.