Q: Hey Metal Tech,

I have a question concerning your 2022 Bronco 4 door sliders. What is your design thinking on not having a cross brace welded in between the round tubing and the main body square tubing at front of the slider? I have your set on order and wondered about that when looking at various slider designs out there to purchase. Thanks.

Mark C.

Mark,

I am happy to help with this as the designer of our sliders. We actually do have a front brace in with the DOM tubing (always DOM, never an option of going HERW, that's like asking, "Here's first class, but did you want coach?" Every one of our sliders is DOM). The front dimple die step plate has the same wall thickness as the tubing, it also features the 4 formed "dimple" holes for added bracing and is stitch-welded along the full 20+ inches on either side. This is a far superior front brace from a single duplicated piece of tubing (1.75" wide) welded between the outer rail and the body. The impact we have designed for is the outer rail trying to get pushed into the main body. The step plate is like a blade with 10x the area spread out to distribute impact across both the outer rail and the main body. It just outperforms the single supports.

Since we have been designing and wheeling sliders for over 20 years, we have tried single supports back in the day. Once we did the welded-in step plate, the performance increased with less rail deflection due to the increased load distribution using more of the inner and outer rails, we did not look back.