So, driving a lowered car is something I’m used to, but there are some things you just can’t account for. While on a trip south, I was following a minivan by about 3 car lengths, and then all of a sudden a dead armadillo appeared in the road from where the van had just passed over him. The van didn’t touch him, but he managed to tear a decent chunk out of my secondary skid plate. These being plastic and not cheap from the dealer. I figured I could give it a shot to make my own. I know there are some good options out there, but $300 seemed a bit high for a metal skid (although after this endeavor I can understand their pricing a bit more).
Anyhow, I don’t have that many pictures, but I’ll run you through the process.
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I removed both plastic skid plates and traced their rough outline onto a piece of cardboard. I left some room on all sides to be trimmed down and to allow for bends.
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Began test fitting the cardboard and trimming as needed. My original goal was to have it fit and cover all parts of the underbody as the oem does and have it pull the fender lining tight.
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I decided to use either 16 or 18 gauge aluminum (can’t remember they exact type or thickness, if I find my receipt I’ll update it) and bought about a 3 1/2 by 4 1/2 sheet of it for about 30 bucks. I had already talked to another shop that said they’d throw some bends in it for free, just a sheet metal shop and was nice to the guy.
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I then traced this pattern from the trimmed cardboard to the aluminum. Using a jigsaw with a metal scrolling blade, the job went pretty quick. I then test fit it as best I could with out being bent. I marked 3 spots where bends would need to be. The first spot was the utmost forward where the sheet would begin to bend slightly down. The second is where the sheet would begin to bend more significantly down and now has passed the mounting holes of the front bumper and is free from where it tucks into the front bumper. The third bend is where it would level back out with the first part of the sheet, therefore the total of the first 2 bends but in the opposite direction.
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I then brought the sheet back home and began test fitting and trimming more. Like I said, I originally had the skid plate curve up under and grab the fender lining, but my angle was slightly off and in a hard breaking bend I got some rubbing, so to avoid from trashing my tires I cut the sheet straight back and decided to just worry about the vital parts.
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Once all areas were properly in place I began to figure out mounting. It is best to figure out securely getting one set of holes set and then securing the plate to them, rather than trying to mark and drill all holes at once. There are two welded nuts at the front that are great to use as the first mounting point. You just need to cut slits more than holes in the sheet to allow the bolts to tighten at an angle. From there I used the original skid plate to mark the holes for the following brackets. I thought about tapping into the frame, or creating my own anchors, but thought I’d try this first. Due to the gauge metal I chose, it’s a very tight fit, but the oem snap screws were able to be used to anchor into the original skid plate location. Due to this all that was left was to drill the holes in the proper location and screw them in.
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Finally after all the fit was good, I added two air inlets to help with cooling as the oem skidplate does this as well, especially around the transmission/center diff/dp’s. This was easy enough just using the jig saw again.
Thoughts, so far it’s been great and it’s taken some abuse. The aftermarket kits are thicker than this, but you’ve got to think about what type of force it would take to puncture this as the impact pressure is spread across and is much better at dispersing the energy than the plastic that will give way at a much lower impact power. Due to the angle of my bends, it’s not as perfectly flush as it could be, and I can rub over some things, but it takes a decent dip to catch it. It usually sounds bad, but really isn’t it’s just a big sheet of aluminum rubbing against asphalt so of course it’s gonna sound louder than some flimsy plastic! I’m also debating adding a drain hole for the oil, but most of the time I do the oil changes with an oil extractor. So anyhow, take it as what you will. It’s not then end all to skid plates, but it certainly does a better job than stock did, and it only cost me my time and $30 bucks, plus I got some enjoyment and satisfaction out of it. If I did it again, it’d take a lot less time and be a lot cleaner looking, but the first time is always the toughest.
Picture Time!
I know I said I used OEM screws, but on the back two I needed to use some longer bolts and nuts due to mine covering a larger area and to be able to tighten down. But just using a ratchet above & below it was easy to clamp the sucker down.
The side flaps before I cut them off:
Here you can see the front mounting bolts:
Like I said, not the absolute prettiest thing, but she protects the important parts and does a lot better job of it than the stock plastic did. My original mock up was pretty clean and symmetrical, but due to trimming and adjusting it got slightly off. But if anyone has lost their skid plate, I’d say it’d be a decent weekend project to give it a shot.