Fred Williams
Brand Manager, Petersen’s 4Wheel & Off Road
“Stupid is as stupid does.” What does that mean? If a smart person does a stupid thing, then they’re not really that smart. For example, we have this nice newer (’10) Ram 3500 truck. It’s our tow rig. It doesn’t need to be used off-road on hard obstacles since we have it to tow our beater 4x4. But as stupid does, we took it off-road and proceeded to bash up the rocker panels. We could blame the rocks, the low-hanging rocker panel, or fate itself and say that we can’t have nice stuff, but the fact is we were dumb. The good part is we can usually fix dumb.
This month we fix our dumb actions with some Sleekster Rockers. These are rocker panel protection for later-model 4x4s (currently available for Pathfinders, Tacomas, FJ Cruisers, Raptors, and Ram trucks, with others in the works), but unlike most rock sliders that are welded to the frame, these are incorporated into the body itself. The unique design, though contrary to popular principle, actually works very well since they attach and reinforce a robust potion of the lower body panels and stay up high for clearance. We not only hid our dumb rocker damage, but we’re also prepared should we ever be dumb again.
We had our ’10 Ram less than six months when we tried to drive over a big dirt berm and banged up the low-hanging bodywork. It wasn’t horrible, but it was a good crease in the rocker and would be expensive to fix. Although we usually don’t care about body damage on our trail rigs we felt dumb dinging our new truck.
We discussed our dilemma with the guys at Randy Ellis Design and they recommended their new Sleekster Rockers. These powdercoated sliders are fabricated of 1⁄8-inch plate and attach to the body directly with 28 stainless steel rivets to the door opening body and with 11 5⁄16-inch bolts through the lower pinch weld. By spreading the load the sliders offer enough strength to support the weight of the vehicle if needed.
This design keeps the sliders from hanging down any lower than the body itself as many frame mounted sliders do. The additional kicker out the back has a cut out step for access to the bed or shell roof rack.
