How much did it cost with shipping?
200 Skid Plate Protection (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter weaselox
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- 200 series skid plates
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Here are some shots of the OEM “armor” on a 2011 LX570 (which I suspect is same across 200-series line) —
Three pieces are metal, three are plastic. One that’s missing from the photos is the small 5”x6” plastic oil drain access panel.
The photos show the underbody protection “road-facing”-side first; followed by photo of “truck-facing” side.
Overall, the OEM “skid protection” shows poor design. Low quality steel; 3 different types of mounting hardware — non-intuitive assembly and disassembly; etc.
I noticed that instead of dissassembling each piece, it is possible to figure out each frame mount point and potentially remove bolts only around the perimeter, thereby removing the entire “skid plate” as one piece, or maybe two pieces. I’ll try to get underneath today again and circle those mounting points.
Please note — front plastic wind deflectors may be reversed on the floor — I didn’t take time to match them up R v L — just wanted to snap a quick photo.
Three pieces are metal, three are plastic. One that’s missing from the photos is the small 5”x6” plastic oil drain access panel.
The photos show the underbody protection “road-facing”-side first; followed by photo of “truck-facing” side.
Overall, the OEM “skid protection” shows poor design. Low quality steel; 3 different types of mounting hardware — non-intuitive assembly and disassembly; etc.
I noticed that instead of dissassembling each piece, it is possible to figure out each frame mount point and potentially remove bolts only around the perimeter, thereby removing the entire “skid plate” as one piece, or maybe two pieces. I’ll try to get underneath today again and circle those mounting points.
Please note — front plastic wind deflectors may be reversed on the floor — I didn’t take time to match them up R v L — just wanted to snap a quick photo.
How is it poor design? It is more than just about anything out there gets in stock form. Those tires in that picture will be punctured and flat before something pokes through the factory skids.
This tire setup is for hauling 3 small kids around town — with a separate BFG AT KO2 setup for camping/trail use. Not everyone has the luxury of having a “dedicated trail rig” — so let’s stay on point.
Bad design because there are three different mounting hardware sizes/types (unnecessary complexity). Cheap flexible steel that rusts after every scratch and ding. Tons of mud pockets that three days of powerwashing completely disassembled components couldn’t completely clean. So yeah, bad design.
Posts on these types of forums serve precisely this purpose.
There is a big advantage in the current design, and that is that it allows the “under armor” to be disassembled by one person with each jigsaw puzzle piece having manageable dimensions and weight. But they aren’t that heavy, so if the three metal pieces were joined (welded or bolted) it wouldn’t be that hard to remove the entire panel.
The point is - I live in Florida. My skid plates do a great job of protecting my underbody from sand, mud and roots. If I lived or wheeled out west with rocks, I would get something with more protection. This platform has been sold worldwide for the past 10 years with those skid plates.
Question, and maybe this is for @Taco2Cruiser but in seeing a bunch of new designs for other truck skids on Instagram, I notice many of the manufacturers design air holes to allow for better cooling in the area (specifically the front skid), got into conversation with one of them because it looks like all these holes are just places to get stuck on a rock edge. Their reply was that cooling is more important and that yeah that may happen but part of the trade off. Not much ventilation on the ARB, or BBs, just curious your thoughts?
I'd assume most airflow goes into the radiator/condensor/cooler through the grill, flows back on top of the skids and out the back. Sorta like this. Having holes in a steel skid sounds like a great spot for a rock to catch when you're trying to slide over something.
Granted an aftermarket bumper changes things a bit. I know my TT bumper has speed-holes towards the bottom for cooling effect.
Granted an aftermarket bumper changes things a bit. I know my TT bumper has speed-holes towards the bottom for cooling effect.
Best thing I have read all day, this guy telling someone else to stay on point haha!
Toyota overdesigned most of the vehicle and they know for the US especially your LX would probably never see heavy rock usage so the skid protection they provided would be enough for taking the kids to school and such.....
Taco2Cruiser
Crazy American Off Road
I actually wrote a whole thing on air flow on another thread some time ago, but it was moved so that thread died.
Super long story short, I tested air temp all along the drivetrain with the OEM and with BB skids in Texas and Georgia heat while low range slow off roading. There was absolutely no difference.
Heat dispersion is absolutely necessary. And vehicles like the FJ Cruiser that came with air vents from the factory to cool the front differential is a good example.
But the 200 has heat sink fins on the front differential half shaft, the engine having both a clutch fan and an electric auxiliary fan, engine oil cooler, two transmission coolers, and a power stearing cooler.
So unlike lesser vehicles that relay on the air temp to hopefully help cool things, the 200 doesn’t care, and the factory OEM skids tell that story.
One area of tempersture emphasis was the transmission pan, because the stock skid has vents that angle air upward. But after testing the area 1/2” from the pan, we found it never changed temperature and neither did the fluid in the trans. I attribute that to the BudBuilt trans skid runs flat on the crossmember to not cause “valleys” that give edges to get rocks caught on. But it also allowed enough clearance to fit a bigger B&M transmission pan. So when there is the factory pan, there tons a space for air to flow around.
The biggest reason I have found for holes in skid plates is a look. That, and companies like to put their logo in skids for advertising reason, which kills strength but they don’t care.
Some have said that holes help with mud clearing. But as a guy from Florida mud bogs and Tellico mud rock crawling, that doesn’t work in real world. Mud is just too sticky to remove from a few holes in plate and trying to spray it out from the outside.
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Agree, the OEM setup is a mud accumulator, and a good cleaning requires removing seven separate underbody pieces.
Curious if anyone has welded/bolted the three metal ones to cut that number down to five (four plastic, one fused metal plate). The five is really deceptive, because one of the seven is the little oil access panel (5”x6” or so), which can be left bolted on the bigger plastic tray.
Also, instead of fabbing an entirely new skidplate, it’s also possible to weld/bolt more solid reinforcement plates to the flimsy metal skid parts. So what results is a sturdier armor plate that’s cheaper than aftermarket solutions and reuses factory mounting points. Structurally, it doesn’t necessarily need to be whole load bearing, and you probably don’t want steel plating to be bolted on to those frame points because that reduces frame roll/flex — which introduces far more problems than I think it solves. But higher-strength reinforced steel/aluminum armor that uses factory mount points and is integrated into factory plating could be a possibility.
Has anyone done this last mod or something in that spirit?
Markuson
SILVER Star
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So folks can visualize this better, the green are the three metal plates (and the green highlighted area would be the new welded/reinforced plate), and the red highlighted parts are the plastic shields.
Thinking about frame flex under articulation loads, it occurs to me that this may be one reason why the shielding is so “flimsy” and multi-component — could it be that it’s purposely designed to allow flex? So the three metal plate design is engineered to buckle a little bit under particular geometries? A good way to test this in the field is to examine ARB & other skid plate setups to see if the mounting holes are being stretched after years of heavy duty use, in other words — to determine if those setups result in something like frame plating (making ladder frame less flexible) or if they still permit the necessary flex.
I know we are talking about minimal angles of flex in OEM v. variously reinforced frames, but from an engineering perspective, it’s still worthwhile to think about.
Thinking about frame flex under articulation loads, it occurs to me that this may be one reason why the shielding is so “flimsy” and multi-component — could it be that it’s purposely designed to allow flex? So the three metal plate design is engineered to buckle a little bit under particular geometries? A good way to test this in the field is to examine ARB & other skid plate setups to see if the mounting holes are being stretched after years of heavy duty use, in other words — to determine if those setups result in something like frame plating (making ladder frame less flexible) or if they still permit the necessary flex.
I know we are talking about minimal angles of flex in OEM v. variously reinforced frames, but from an engineering perspective, it’s still worthwhile to think about.
Markuson
SILVER Star
Maybe Bud is used to working on R Rovers...where recovery points can be welded several inches off vehicle-to-vehicle?
Taco2Cruiser
Crazy American Off Road
@longranger, you're pretty off on all this, so to clear this convoluted thread up for others that may be getting confused.
The 200 frame is a fully boxed frame with in some places another fully boxed frame inside that, it doesn't flex when articulating over terrain, so that's not a thing here. It's not built like a unimog.
Factory skids are designed to take a forward hit, and if hit, the driver should back up, not drag the truck over the thing that was just hit. It also is thin metal to take the hit, and bend, to not transfer that to the frame, and bend a crossmember in. The engine skid that is plastic is for bottoming out on sand dunes or mud, not for the just mentioned, continued dragging over pointy rocks.
You could weld more metal to the factory skid to reduced its bending, but the mounting tabs will still buckle. So at that point, buy real skids.
BB only use factory mounting points, in fact more of them than factory to distribute the load, and even under hard drops on pointy rocks, won't push mounting points on the crossmembers inward.
The front skid has oval holes for being able to loosely mount the plate during installations. If it was only a simple drill hole, you would have to hold the plate perfectly in place while threading a bolt. Which is not as easy, and can yield to cross threading from impatient installers.
Also, always remember, bolts only hold the skids from falling down. None of the bolts take load during impact, the frame crossmembers take the impact, across a massive surface area, unlike the much few points the factory skid does.
When you make a plate take more weight than the whole 200 weights, you need to distribute that weight out better than factory.
The 200 frame is a fully boxed frame with in some places another fully boxed frame inside that, it doesn't flex when articulating over terrain, so that's not a thing here. It's not built like a unimog.
Factory skids are designed to take a forward hit, and if hit, the driver should back up, not drag the truck over the thing that was just hit. It also is thin metal to take the hit, and bend, to not transfer that to the frame, and bend a crossmember in. The engine skid that is plastic is for bottoming out on sand dunes or mud, not for the just mentioned, continued dragging over pointy rocks.
You could weld more metal to the factory skid to reduced its bending, but the mounting tabs will still buckle. So at that point, buy real skids.
BB only use factory mounting points, in fact more of them than factory to distribute the load, and even under hard drops on pointy rocks, won't push mounting points on the crossmembers inward.
The front skid has oval holes for being able to loosely mount the plate during installations. If it was only a simple drill hole, you would have to hold the plate perfectly in place while threading a bolt. Which is not as easy, and can yield to cross threading from impatient installers.
Also, always remember, bolts only hold the skids from falling down. None of the bolts take load during impact, the frame crossmembers take the impact, across a massive surface area, unlike the much few points the factory skid does.
When you make a plate take more weight than the whole 200 weights, you need to distribute that weight out better than factory.
