How I Built My Own Backyard Swing Set – Part 3 Attaching Accessories

If you found this page via search engine, you may want to read the Part 1 article first.

• Part 1 – Overview / Design / Material list
• Part 2 – Construction
• Part 3 – Installing Accessories (You Are Here)

After seeing the swing set structure assembled, my kids are super excited and bugging me to get 3 swing accessories completed now! I will show you how I attached a swing seat, trapeze bar and Mega Rider. It took about 2 hours to complete my final task.

Congo Play Swing Hangers and Swing-N-Slide Swing Seat

At first, I tried to eyeball the positions and I ended up screwing it up. To avoid repeating the mistake, I marked off the center of the beam and carefully laid out 2 pairs of swing hangers and Mega-Rider hanging brackets using this:

This setup ensures that I have enough clearance away from side support structure (though I had to shrink the space between swing seat / trapeze bar and trapeze bar / mega rider from 28″ to 27″).

Installation process was straightforward:

STEP 1 – I chose to install Congo Play swing hanger (model# SH-04) for my Swing-N-Slide Swing Seat (model# NE4886);

STEP 2 – I traced the swing hanger and holes onto the main beam and drilled holes using my 10″ boring drill bit (make sure to take your time and drill straight up);

STEP 4 – Next, I inserted two, 8″ galvanized bolts from the top, gently tapping it with my 3 pound drilling hammer to clear the hole and check the alignment against the hanger holes. In my case, one of the bolt was slightly out of alignment (happens), so I needed to remove that one re-drill it.

TIP: Removing bolts that are snug is a very difficult task without hammering them back out; and you never want to hammer on the bottom of the bolt where the thread begins as that will most likely end up damaging the thread.

Instead, screw on the nut first so that the bolt thread is just under the surface of the nut. Only then you can gently tap on the nut to back out the bolt without ruining the thread.

STEP 5 – With the swing hanger attached on one side, I re-drilled a hole from the bottom

STEP 6 – I normally would have installed the remaining hangers and brackets at this point, but my son was begging me to attach the swing seat first so that’s what I did:

What you don’t see in the picture is that I, weighing 195 pounds, tried it first to make sure that it was safe. By the way, his smiling face was absolutely priceless!

Swing-N-Slide Extra Duty Swing Hangers and Trapeze Bar

Installing Swing-N-Slide swing hangers is same as before, except that I drilled a second hole from the bottom. I also upgraded the bolts from 3/8″ to 1/2″, which is the reason why the washers and nuts are sticking out.

I think this activity is awesome in that it will help my children build up upper body strength like monkey bars.

Swing-N-Slide Mega Rider

This is a cute rider that a child can get moving by themselves or a friend. I like this Mega Rider better than the Eastern Jungle Gym Horse Glider because:

• Though fit and finish was good, I question the longevity as plastic components were noticeably thinner than Mega Rider;
• Seat are rather narrow, forcing children to struggle to maintain balance (direct observation at my friend’s house)
• I did not like those foot rings. For small children, their legs can easily go through when they fall and can cause leg injury (Mega Rider does not have these rings);

Mega Rider comes with all necessary hardware in the package. The instruction calls for one, 2 x 4 x 4 piece but I elected to use my leftover 4 x 4s.

STEP 1 – Check the content to make sure nothing is damaged and all parts are accounted.

STEP 2 – Assembling the riding equipment is fairly straight forward, inserting two rods to support the bottom piece to the hanging piece.

STEP 3 – Instead of using 2x4s as stated in the installation manual, I used 24″ x 4′ x 4′ leftovers (Note – I really wish Swing-N-Slide made it so that the bolt holes would be positioned in the middle of 2×4 or 4×4)

This is what the end product looks like:

FINAL WORDS

I know it’s been a long read, but we are done! My kids are very happy with the swing set and watching them giggling and having fun on the swing set has been worth the effort.

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Thanks and good luck with your DIY project!