Bill,

I think your idea of a bend is a great one.  You could bury the bent end in the foam of the fat end so that there would be minimum clearance problems.  I wish I had thought of this.  I think that I would go heavier that 3/8” but if it doesn’t work it would be minimum of effort to dig it out and replace it with something more stout.

Here’s the lengths of my sliders:

Long slider:  24.5”
Short slider:  4.0”
Position of short slider (from gear leg clearance hole):  29.75”
Highest point of long slider:  approx. 2.19”

Hope this helps,

Hal    81VP