Factory Rock rails

[timgco]

Ok, so my sig other has rock rails on her H3. I put them on a couple of months ago when we first got the truck. The problem was that almost every bolt was cross-threading and I had to get 4 wheel parts finish the job. they had to re-thread almost all of them.

So, now I put them on my "3" and thought I'd share a couple of tips.

The first thing I did was take out the harware, gunscrubber , and WD 40.

Step one: I took the gunscrubber and cleaned the threads of all road debris. Sand and dirt was in the threads. Make sure you don't get your paint!

Step two: I shot all the threads with the WD 40.

Step Three: Next I took a bolt and pre-threaded every single hole. The threads were rough on two of them. I think that would have caused some issues.

Step 4: Use the foam blocks that the rock rails were packed in for support of the rock rails. Since I was doing this by myself, I used these to get the rock rails close to the frame and wekd nuts. It made things much easier and was almost the perfect height.

Step 5: I started all of the top holes first and got them all half way in before startng the lowers. A couple of the holes weren't lined up perfectly so tightening all of the top ones down all the way would have made this harder.

Step 6: Crank all 8 bolts down.

Step 7: time to do the DR SD. Make sure not pinch the parking brake cables. I started up by those first.

It only took about 40 minutes with hand tools. I did not even need to use an air ratchet or 4 wheel parts this time.

This is not a tough mod at all. But it was very frustrating the first one I did.


FWIW,
Tim.