So in the process of painting my tracker I deiced instead of just leaving the rocker damage I was going to remove it and replace it with steel sliders. I used 2x4x 1/8" steel tube
Here are a few pics of what I was working with.
Passinger side

Driver side

So I started by cutting  the old rocker out. On the outside I folowed the body line of the car and cut it with a cut off wheel in a angle grinder. I did this free hand but, I am really good with a cut off wheel in a grinder though I would suggest marking a straight edge to cut it though. For the under side I Wish I would of cut it a little at a time. I removed to much metal from the underside of the drivers side. I just added a few small pieces of scrap I had laying around to fill in the space. There were wire inside the rocker of the drivers side I tried my best but I did cut them a little. nothing a little solder and shrink wrap wont fix though.

Driver side cut with steel 2x4 under it

Her is a shot of the under side. I would say I cut about in the middle of the two pinch welds on the bottem of the car. then I hammerd them as flush as I could. I also used a clamp to hold it even tighter up aganst the slider


I just tack, tack, tack welded on the bottem. When I would try to do a contounious bead i would blow out the sheet metal.
Seems to hold well but time on the rocks will tell...

 sliders tacked up on pass side

Close up of the weld beads on the pass side


Im actually torn I didnt get the technuque down till i made it to the pass. side so the drivers is ground down and the pass side has nice beads like this.
Do you guys thing I should leave the bead work or grind it down. I figure its the same amouunt of work either way cuz I have to grid one side down or re weld the other side so what do you all think?

I trimmed the ends of the slider while it was on the truck. In fact I had them compleatly welded on before I trimmed them. I wanted them to be flush with the body lines.

front



Back


I cut the end cap/tabs from some 3/16 steel I had laying around

Nice!

That is exactly what I will need to do on my Sidekick.

now for the fenders What I did here was I cut some 3/8's solid rod and tacked it to the raw edege where I cut the fender and then grinded it all smoth came out real nice...



I do need to take a few pics of the finished product but it is all done just need to decied if im going to grind the welds down or not....

I think I would just use seam sealer - paintable, sandable caulk - to smooth out and fill in the welds before painting.

Looks good to me.

That is really similar to the way I did my rock sliders.  I welded a light gauge plate on the bottom of the fenders, and studs on the slider, so I could bolt the bottom of the fender to the top of the slider. (one would work fine.)

Also I welded 1" X 1/8" flat bar on top of the 2 x 4" tubing to make the welding easier.  (Easier for me than trying to fill the gap, although twice as much welding.) And then the weld was at the bottom of the door radius.  As you have noticed the welding gets better the more of you do.

That was my first modification, and I still smile whenever I drop it on some rocks.

Nice job.

if my welding looked like welding i wouldn't have to keep grinding it.
nice work.
i used 2x2 tube braced off the door post and a few other places.
that body is pretty open inside there, huh.
2x4 looks much better.

i've been banging it a bit and it's doing it's job.