A few years ago, before installing my sliders, I spent a lot of time and effort to paint my sliders to match the Limited cladding on my truck. Fast forward a few years, and the paint started chipping off. I expected some dings, but whole pieces of paint started flaking off. About a year ago, I applied rust convertor to the exposed areas and painted the bottom of the sliders with bed liner. It looked good...for a while. Then it, too, started flaking off. So, this week, after loosing another large chunk of paint, I got frustrated and coated the sliders in paint remover. So, now I'm driving around with bare nekked sliders. I like the way they look. Too bad I can't keep them this shiny. I'm going to coat the whole works with POR-15 and then top coat. But, I don't know what color I want.

I've been seriously contemplating painting the TJM bumper, sliders and (to be installed) rear bumper silver to match the cladding. Then I got to thinking about using gloss black with a chip resistant clear coat. The gloss black would allow me to easily and cheaply repair any dings or scratches or scrapes. But the silver would look darn cool.

So, what do you think?

 

Give them a good cleaning with degreaser (brake cleaner or something), rough them up a bit with some sand paper, clean them again, hit them with a couple coasts of anti-rust primer, then spray paint them semi-flat black (scratches don't show up as much as on gloss). They will look great and be very easy to touch up. I did this to my sliders and they have held up great, unfortunately, when I did my rear bumper, I just hit it with some black spray paint and it is not holding up well at all, sand and rocks from the road and killing them, there are large sections where the paint is worn off. Good prep, good priming, and random touchups and you will be fine.

 

yeah black is the way to go in my opinion.

 

truck bed liner....out of a can. Durable and easy to touch up. I just did half of my friends slider with truck bed liner and the other half with some type of paint he used and so far the bedliner is holding up a lot better.

 

I would say black if you want to look tougher, or matching the cladding if you want to look classier. If it were mine, I'd match the cladding.

 

I say match the cladding but find a rustoleum hammered that is a close match and get a couple extra cans. Just as easy to touch up as the black.

 

I recently had my Hanna Quality sliders powdercoated flat black and was VERY happy with the results. They look great, should hold up well, and are easy to touch-up. The previous owner had them PC'd white, the same color of the truck, and they were an upkeep nightmare. Total cost including burning off the old PC was $80.

Cheers -

 

Id do black to add some contrast and it'd be super easy to repaint.

 

Easy is always the best way.

 

i voted glossy black, but i vote maybe not glossy black... but not silver or matching at all to rest like it "is?" in the pic..

maybe go with a rustoleum hammered (dark gray) i have that on mine and seems to hold up well, on top of rustoleum primer... and like as said before, clean with brake cleaner or equiv...

it probably helped me a LOT to have my sliders sandblasted before painting, so they had absolutely no oils or anything on them

 

^^rustoleum hammered is great stuff, and comes in a bunch of different colors. i did a 2 tone on my lifted subaru with it in a dark bronze color. and a buddy of mine used it in black on his rear axle for his Heep....