Well, I'm the guinea pig with the first install of Tuff Ant Defender sliders on this side of the Pacific (Pennsylvania, USA).

First and foremost, many thanks to Jake of TuffAnt USA who not only delivered, but helped me get them installed (well, I helped him...). Great guy and great service.

For reference, I have a Defender 110S, P300, coil springs. That gave us several differences to work through from the standard Australian installs: left-hand drive, 4-cyl petrol engine (most had gone on diesels), and no air tanks for the nonexistent air suspension. And maybe some other US-spec differences.

I didn't really document the work well enough to provide a guide here - sorry about that, but we were moving fast to get it all done today, and I kept getting interrupted by my "real" job (that pays me the money I need to buy sliders), so I didn't want to slow us down to take lots of well-lit pictures. I'll post the ones I did take.

A few of the brackets and other bits and pieces on my car didn't match the instructions from TuffAnt, which I believe were based on a diesel with air springs. In the end, I think the biggest difference was the suspension - there are some steel bits on my vehicle that aren't on an air sprung vehicle - they fill the area just inboard of the sill where the air tank would go. We debated removing them, but in the end decided to leave them in place - there was plenty of room for them above the plate of the sliders, and who knows, maybe they add some structural integrity or something.

We removed the felt and didn't bother trying to reinstall it. I've read everyone's varying perspective on the issue; I just don't think the felt would provide all that much protection, and there really isn't a way to secure it once the sliders are in. Jake tells me that TuffAnt is working on some skid plates that fit with their sliders, so maybe some day in the future I'll get to be the guinea pig for the skid plates too.

Things I like about the TuffAnt sliders:

- Slick look. Wide enough to offer a real step to help get into the vehicle, but not the full "nerf bar" look of the bigger sliders also available in the US.

- No need to remove the plastic trim at the door sill. They just fit around it. We did have to remove a number of plastic trim plugs during the install to be reinserted afterward - one of which broke on the way out, so if you're installing these in the future you might want to pick up a few spares from the dealer ahead of time. I found something that was close at the local auto parts store, but it was just a little too wide. We had to do some finagling to get it into the hole so we could push the plunger and expand it. I include a picture below of the plastic plug that broke.

There has been much discussion of the exposed bolt heads and cone washers vs. recessed bolts. I'm OK with the risk of the exposed bolt heads at this stage but I'll let you all know if I get hung up or break one off next time I'm off road (hoping for early next week).

I still need to torque the bolts down; we couldn't find the spec for the rivnuts the bolts go into, so we tightened them enough to hold for now, and I'll torque them properly once I have the spec.

The pics below show the finished job and the pieces we removed but didn't re-install (pretty much all of which are for the felt we removed - the felt, the brackets that go with it, and the bolts that hold it in place). I didn't have mudflaps, so we didn't have to figure out how to retain those, but I did lose the little mini-flap that comes stock (probably there to smooth airflow or something). You can see those plastic bits in the left foreground of the picture of removed pieces below.

I know Jake is dropping off a few more sets on this trip, so good luck to the others who will be installing soon.

Yours,
Mike





Rear door open

Front door open

Wide enough for a step

Felt and brackets not reinstalled

Bolts for the felt and brackets not reinstalled

Plastic trim retainers - we broke this one removing it and could have used some extras when it was time to reinstall them

 

Beautiful job! I am ordering mine next week and have a couple questions. I am also in the states.
Did you drill out the holes with the 55mm hole saw to expose the bolts at the edge of the car with the part still installed or did you remove it first?
Was the shipping quote accurate, mine says it will be around 2300.00 AU dollars? To MI
Did you work on the ground or did you have a lift?
Thank you

FYI Off Road Development has all the armor for below the defender you could ever want, buy pieces separately or as a package.

 

Did you drill out the holes with the 55mm hole saw to expose the bolts at the edge of the car with the part still installed or did you remove it first?
- We pulled the plastic plugs to free it before we drilled but did not remove the plastic sill from the vehicle.

Was the shipping quote accurate, mine says it will be around 2300.00 AU dollars? To MI
- I ordered through TuffAnt USA, so I can only suggest asking them. They handled importing the sliders and then charged for delivery to Pennsylvania.

Did you work on the ground or did you have a lift?
- We did the work in my garage (it was drizzly today) with two ramps that we used on the side of the vehicle we were working on. That gave us plenty of room. I don’t have a floor jack big enough to raise the slider and roll it into place, so we ended up resting it on a milk crate and then going under it on our backs and lifting it to the bottom of the Defender by raising our legs/bending our knees until we could get a couple of bolts finger-tight. Not elegant, but it worked.


​​​​​​​

 

Awsome! I love the persian rug in the garage.
Thank you for the reply.
How do i know I am using the Tuff Ant UA site? The site I found has AU dollars on it.

 

https://www.tuffantusa.com

I would just email them at info@tuffantusa.com

Yours,
Mike

 

Looks awesome!! Well done. I wouldn't have sweated the exposed bolts if it were me. Heck, just keep a few on hand and one of those reverse threaded extractors in case of need. More random stuff I would likely throw in the boot and never use...

Well done & I like the looks. Thanks for posting pics.

 

Congrats to the Tuffant recipients. Looking great.

 

Just out of curiosity... where did all of those formed felt panels come from? When I look under my vehicle (when I was under there installing the front skid plate with the cut out for the recovery point), all I see is aluminum armor plates. I can't recall seeing anything that looked like felt.

 

Editing because when I re-read what I wrote I think it wasn’t clear.

One of the felt blankets is under (over?) the metal plate in the midline toward the front. We did reinstall that metal plate, but not the felt. I have a pic of the top of the metal plate (the part facing the sky) because it had collected mud and other stuff and I rinsed it off.

The other two felt blankets were toward the rear along either side. They secure into rivnuts along the sills of the vehicle, but the sliders either use the holes or cover them, so you can’t put them back where they were.



Metal plate that attaches to the belly, above which is some of the felt.

 

This video does a pretty good job of showing the layers of felt and metal under the Defender.