afg10000
New member
I was all excited to go to my buddy's shop to get my Savage sliders welded on this morning. Unfortunately, once we got them up there we realized that the front and rear flares were going to have to be cut considerably to make them work. Maybe even more than the flares. I did talk to Roy before ordering (he was really nice and helpful) about the Limited flares and required trimming. He informed me that Toyota made 7 or 8 variations of flares for the 3rd gens. He said some accommodate the sliders with little or no trimming, others not so much. apparently I have the latter. I do not want to cut my flares at all. i just had them all professionally re-done and painted. Also a chicken and egg thing. If I installed the sliders first, it would have been a giant mess to do the rocker panel molding. Do them after and run into my current problem. I wanted the Savage sliders because they're built very well and already welded together. I wouldn't have minded 4xinnovations being I wouldn't have this issue, but my welding friend has to go out of his way to make time for this and it's asking a lot to have him spend all of that time just to assemble them. Just so happens that he does have a '98 regular cab Tacoma with a 3" Toytec lift and the Savage sliders fit perfectly on there. We did put them under my Runner to take some angle measurements and found that a 5-8 degree angle (rather than the 20) on the slider frame would allow for the perfect amount of room under the flares, pinch weld and perfect fitment for the welding pads to the frame. So here's the options we've come up with. Want to know if any of you folks' have any other advice.
1: Sell the sliders to my good friend with the Tacoma, call Roy tomorrow and see if he can make a new set at the 5-8 degree angle. Hopefully I would break even other than the prepping and painting. I didn't do the best job cosmetically on these sliders so I'd get to try again. Chalk it up as lessons learned and everyone's happy -
2: cut the welding pads and gussets off, cut the frame pipes at new angles and weld everything back together (a lot of work and difficult)
3: cut the flares, remove and re-assemble, prep, paint again and reinstall. Again, a lot of work and I don't want to cut them to that extreme.
4: cut some wedge shape steel to fit the angle of space between the welding pads and frame measured from placing the sliders where we want them. Weld the wedges onto the sliders, them weld to frame. This seems like compromising the structural integrity and quite a jimmied way of getting the job done. However, I only get to play in rocks a few times a year and do not intentionally slam my vehicle onto things, though it does happen sometimes. You all know what I'm talking about -
Any other thoughts I can garner from you folks would be much appreciated. We did however get the panhard bar drop welded on today and I got some welding lessons. Not at all a bad thing. Here's a pic of my flares.
1: Sell the sliders to my good friend with the Tacoma, call Roy tomorrow and see if he can make a new set at the 5-8 degree angle. Hopefully I would break even other than the prepping and painting. I didn't do the best job cosmetically on these sliders so I'd get to try again. Chalk it up as lessons learned and everyone's happy -
2: cut the welding pads and gussets off, cut the frame pipes at new angles and weld everything back together (a lot of work and difficult)
3: cut the flares, remove and re-assemble, prep, paint again and reinstall. Again, a lot of work and I don't want to cut them to that extreme.
4: cut some wedge shape steel to fit the angle of space between the welding pads and frame measured from placing the sliders where we want them. Weld the wedges onto the sliders, them weld to frame. This seems like compromising the structural integrity and quite a jimmied way of getting the job done. However, I only get to play in rocks a few times a year and do not intentionally slam my vehicle onto things, though it does happen sometimes. You all know what I'm talking about -
Any other thoughts I can garner from you folks would be much appreciated. We did however get the panhard bar drop welded on today and I got some welding lessons. Not at all a bad thing. Here's a pic of my flares.
