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Poly: 1, Jeep: 0 - another lesson learned

9K views 82 replies 39 participants last post by  peanut 
#1 ·
The rocker impact spot:





Nothing unusual, right? The result elsewhere:







 
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6
#2 ·
It's actually a bit worse than it looks in the pics. Needless to say, I'm a bit perturbed that the $600 rockers I bought to protect my rockers actually damaged them. Yeah, it was a hard hit, but no harder than happens to people all the time. And this is a pretty light 2-dr - fully loaded with passengers etc well below 5000 lbs. If this had been a 7000+ lb 4-dr, I can only imagine what it would have done.

It got me thinking that it's not necessarily a great idea to have rockers that strong attached to the body. Some people have bitched about bending their PSC rail, or their ACE rail caved....but it protected the body and didn't damage the tub. I would have much rather had that happen and have to just replace a rail. Hell, that's why we buy them.

My advice, use something that will bend or break before the Jeep tub. Using a nuke-proof rocker isn't as smart as I thought.
 
#6 ·
And people give me shit cause my psc sliders have some give! I'm adding the body panels as well cause like you said I'd rather bend the rails than damage the body...I'm sure you'll get that all worked out..
 
#16 ·
Yep, I try not to piss off the vendors here too much about this, but all the tub mounted jobs do this if you beat em hard enough. Seem several PSC sets and this is the 2nd Poly set Ive seen do it. My Pure Jeeps were holding out pretty well for a long time, but after my last trip to Ridgecrest, now I am getting body damage from those too.

All these vendors make fantastic products, its just the tin-can sheetmetal that Jeep used on the heavy suckers. That, and folks do things with daily-driver Jeeps now that buggies wouldn't touch 10 years ago.

Came to the conclusion (with several other folks that wheel in my circle) that the frame mounted is the way to go if you wheel like a maniac. Just sucks that you have to loose all that precious ground clearance with a low center of gravity build.

I guess you can't have it all :bawling:
 
#9 ·
Hope you don't mind OP but I have shared the link on another forum.

This is the argument I have had for a while now. Body mounted protection worked great on the TJ but the JK is a more car like design and thinner metal etc.
 
#12 ·
Yeah, this definitely gave me some pause. In addition to the body these are mounted on the underside using the two body mounts on each side. Obviously its not enough, as the slider was able to flex into the body hard enough to damage it. The freaking slider though.....not so much as a dent. I don't know what kind of magic pixie metal these guys are building these from.

Let's just say in the future I'm going with a proper frame-mount rail, and if it uses body support, it's going to be a larger plate to distribute the force ala Nemesis/PSC/etc. The Poly slider concentrates too much force along a pretty narrow strip of the tub and not enough support underneath.

Oh well, they say the wimmens like body damage.
 
#14 ·
I think the one major difference between most JK tub mounted sliders and the TJ tub mounted sliders is the way they are attached.

It seems to me that most of the tub mounted sliders out there for the JK use nut-certs to attach them. While this makes the install easy it does put more force on a single panel.

Where as the TJ mounted sliders tended to be through-bolted with crush sleeves which creates a much more dent-resistant mounting point.

This is the only reason I went with my PJ sliders is because they are through-bolted.
 
#19 ·
I have been saying this for years.
Body mounted sliders are a bad idea.
Period.
 
#23 · (Edited)
Guys, I'm not trying to rile up the vendors either. Poly is great stand-up guys who make great stuff and are an asset to the Jeep community. These are at least as good as any other body-mounted sliders out there and probably better. ANYBODY'S would have suffered the same fate or worse in this situation. But hey, I'm a Jeeper and wheeling enthusiast first. If it comes down to being worried about riling the vendor who I'm helping keep in business with my own money, or helping out the rest of the Jeeping community with some information that could prove valuable....I share information in the community. I would expect the same of others and would be kinda ticked if they withheld something from the rest of us for that reason!

This was posted more as information the community could absorb and do with as they wish. Just sayin' these tubs aren't as strong or distribute the load as well as many of us have come to believe. From here on out for me, it's frame-mounted....and I too hate the ground clearance loss and hangup points. But, it's better than a cratered tub. Now :beer: :beer: for all, Poly included.
 
#25 ·
I'm surprised no one from poly has chimed in, but as you've stated anything that mounts directly to the body no matter how well built is still going to distribute absorbed energy to the body so there will always be a chance of something like this.
 
#29 ·
Maybe I'm mistaken, but who cares if you piss in the vendors cornflakes? I know there's lots of great vendors here, and I seriously appreciate them and have had great interaction with them (spod guy especially), but last time I checked, THEY were competing for OUR business and hard earned money. If I see a fault in their product or business practices, I'm sure going to call them out on it. Besides, maybe you're bringing up a design flaw that the vendor will then work to correct. I'm sure poly or any other vendor would appreciate that!

In summary, bitch on :bawling: and :beer: to the great vendors.

:thefinger:
 
#31 ·
I've been eyeballing a set of shrockworks frame mounted sliders myself lately.

I banged up my ACE rails during jeep jam. And while they did a good job of taking the brunt of the damage, they did make contact with the pinch seam and I'd like to keep that from happening in the future.


Sent from my mind using telekynesis!
 
#32 ·
I with you Charbs....I'm not out to defame anybody but I will share my experiences in hopes that good will come of it for someone. I mean....this sucks. The first time I had an issue with a Poly product (and it was a potential safety issue, brought up here just to share information with those who might experience the same) I was freakin' LAMBASTED by the collective here. It was a whole 'How dare you bring up your negative experience with Poly?? You must be a real ****' debacle. I deleted the thread.

I'm pleased to say this time around the collective is a hell of lot more reasonable, and I hope some positive insight comes from this! This isn't even about Poly, it's about how we choose to mount sliders to our JKs and the pitfalls therein.

Guess I just need to figure out what to do with it now. Leave it alone and risk further damage, or pull them, repair and install some frame-mount protection. Dunno yet.
 
#33 · (Edited)
This is why I built my own sliders and mounted/welded them to the frame. I have dropped my JKU on them and pushed against rocks very hard. Sorry to hear about your body damage since that's why we get sliders in the first place. I trust that Poly will make good if it's something that resulted from their product. I really like the guys from Poly and they are an active vendor that uses what they sell.

You can see from the pictures I have bolts in the pinch seams under the rocker. I used the holes Jeep had for body mounted rockers.I have steel plates mounted behind the seam in case the supports flex enough to hit. I made the supports cross at those points during my design. I thought it would support the area and spread the load across the plate better. I haven't seen any contact after several trips so I'm not sure I needed them but it doesn't hurt either. I also have a 1.25 BL on mine, so that helped when I was building my sliders. I lost some clearance but like others have said you can't have it all. I'm hoping when I can get 37's this will help me on my break over angle and clearance.

Note: From my lettering you can see I have one of the special "fishing edition jeeps"!




 
#35 ·
The conclusion that I came to after ditching my name brand body mounted sliders is that if beat on a set of body mounted sliders hard enough tub damage is something that is likely to happen. Not to say that there's guys here that have put there's to the test. What im getting at is that there's always that risk factor involved with a tub mounted slider. Now this is just my opinion, I just don't think its possible to make a tub mounted slider that's "bullet proof". Where I wheel here in central cal and being that I run a 4door, I'm extremely dependent upon my sliders. And the last thing I wanted was to have any doubts about their strength. I've got the body damage to show from my previous set. Me personally, I chose the EVO's and I've never had any doubts about their strength to date. Yeah you loose some GC, but to me it is totally worth it. I have yet to have a "****! I wish a didn't have these sliders!" moment yet. Poly is an awesome company, I run quite a few of their parts. The main thing that I understand is that all parts arn't ment for everyone so choose accordingly.

Vick
 
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