Selecting the correct Rock Sliders for your Jimny - By Des Sol 4x4 Adventure Hardware

Selection Criteria

Selecting the correct Rock Sliders for your Jimny should be a carefully considered exercise. It can however be broken down to two main criteria:

Do you want Rock Sliders for show?
Do you want Rock Sliders for protection?

If you are looking for Rock Sliders simply to look good on your vehicle, the choice is simple, go for the cheapest, lightest, best looking deign.

Should you be looking for decent side sill and underbody protection however then you should pay attention to the design of the Rock Slider. The following points should be carefully considered:

Material of construction

Your Rock Sliders will be exposed to the harshest of environments when doing 4×4 trips even if you do not travel many rocky trails. Make sure that the material used to manufacture your Rock Slider plates and brackets are high strength structural steel and piping to ASTM A106 or similar for long-lasting use. Make sure that drainage and flushing holes are available to prevent mud build-up and rust.

Coating

Using a high specification material for slider fabrication is no good if you don’t adequately protect your final product. Make sure that all slider parts are adequately protected by e-coating and powder coating.

Ground clearance

You obviously want to maintain your ground clearance so look for sliders that sit flush with your chassis rails and not below this point.

Side Sills

The Gen3 Jimny has notoriously weak side sills, make sure the slider curves upwards covering/protecting your side sills from being damaged by rocks.

High Lift Jack

If you are an avid 4×4 trailblazer make sure you can jack your vehicle up using your sliders. Jumping on a Rock Slider will not give you a true indication of performance as the forces experienced in the field are from the bottom up not top-down.

Cross Members

Make sure that the slider locating cross members (running at right angles to your chassis) are covered by lateral bars (running parallel to the chassis) to prevent rocks from impacting on these cross members and possibly trapping rocks and your vehicle. These lateral “slider” bars will allow the vehicle to “slide over rocks” instead of trapping the rocks between your chassis area and your cross members.

Mounting Points

For serious off-roaders, the mounting points of your Rock Sliders should be a crucial decision. The strongest part of your vehicle is your chassis and you want your sliders to be fixed to your chassis at all costs.

• Sliders that require bolting directly into your chassis should also be avoided as this will promote rust.
• Sliders that bolt onto your side sill area for additional support should also be avoided as any minimal impact will definitely damage your side sill and also potentially your door.
• There are many designs out there that utilize your Jimny body mounting bolts as your main mounting points to secure your Rock Slider. This is called a pocket mount and is shown below.

The body mounting bolt is removed and the pocket mount is inserted over the rubber mounting and the bolt reinserted.

The Jimny body mount is exactly that, a mounting point that together with the rubber mounting is meant to hold your body in position above your chassis.

Mounting your sliders onto these body mount bolts means that any impact the slider encounters effectively transfers the impact and the sheer force directly onto your body mounting bolts.

These small, extremely long M8 body mount bolts are not designed to take lateral forces or loads. Should these bolts become damaged or sheer, replacing these body mounting bolts is a difficult and expensive exercise.

Rock Slider Fitment

Fitting your Rock Slider should be an easy “bolt on bolt off” exercise as if you damage your Rock Slider it should be a quick and easy exercise to replace them.

Below are Des-Sol’s fitment procedures that show how easy our Rock Slider fitment process is.