Taco2Cruiser
Crazy American Off Road
- Thread starter
- #241
Frequently Asked Questions
Hey guys, so I've seen a few of the same questions comes in on PMs, and a few single questions, that we thought of, but realized I never mentioned them.
Skid Plates
1) Why no holes along the bottom of the plates? Could help with mud removal, heat, or weight savings?
Does the skid plates keep engine heat in? No
Hey guys, so I've seen a few of the same questions comes in on PMs, and a few single questions, that we thought of, but realized I never mentioned them.
Skid Plates
1) Why no holes along the bottom of the plates? Could help with mud removal, heat, or weight savings?
- Off-Roading is awesome, and it's not a competition, its a fun thing. But BudBuilt armor is made by guys who are hard core rock crawlers, body damaged guaranteed, 5' bolder hoping, please remove all glass cause it's getting shattered trails. That's NOT to try and be better than someone who doesn't do that, far from it, but this stuff is made by tough wheelers. Skids plates need to be smooth, every hole, every edge, everything other than smooth metal can hang you up on the trail all day. I'm normally an "just my small opinion" guy, but this is just one of those facts. Skid plates have to be smooth to do tough trails. Holes look cool to those who don't wheel hard trails, but the last thing needed on the item that scraps along the earth is holes that greatly add hangup points and weaken the strength (also note that BudBuilt will never etch a logo into armor in an effort to advertise)
- Heat (see below).
- Mud removal: holes don't help in real world. Mud is sticky, it needs to be removed by hand, putting a hose up there will not make it leave the top side of a skid plate any more than if hole where in it. Also note that BudBuilt is made by east coast, Tellico wheelers, in my opinion, the hardest trails in the US, imagine the Hammers, but covered in slick gumbo mud. Bud knows a lot about mud.
Does the skid plates keep engine heat in? No
- I tested the 200 drivetrain heat a lot in California with stock skids. That was with temps across a month of low range, 3 hours trails, in 70 degree weather. then doing the same areas (especially the transmission pan) in texas under 90 degree, 3 hour low range wheeling with BudBuilt skids, the temperatures across the drivetrain were the same. Bud always take heat into consideration, I mean, he was an autocross and rally car engineer for over ten years, but he was the only manufacturer on the FJ cruiser skid plates to retain the factory front differential cooling design, so it's always been a major part of Bud's designs. Back to the 200 skids, the width of the was actually determined from the catalytic converters. Protecting them, but letting them fully release their heat. But also there is the fact that the front stock skid plate design has absolutely no provisions for cooling, the transmission pan does, but testing has show the transmission plate isn't sealing any heat in. Besides, cooling is done by the radiator and auxiliary ATF cooler. Our drive trains aren't air cooled like an old VW beetle.
- This is a biggie for me. When you wheel, a 3-4 ton Toyota, on pointy things, the surface area of all that weight gets transferred to the weakest part, and that's the frame crossmembers. I've bent every Toyota engine crossmember other than the 200 I've had, because of (and this is where I wanted to learn from Bud) poor armor products having all the right specs, but not distributing load right across the factory parts underneath properly. I have bought a lot of other company skid plates over the years. I've also scrapped all of the other than Bud's skids. Now this, for me, was not on a 200 series, but on the tacoma, FJ/4runner/prado frames, but the theory is the same. It seems like every skid plate out there is a big one piece of plate with a simple tube and washer welded to mate to the frame by bolt. Then there are about 6 of those attachment points across a few feet long by almost 2 foot wide skid. So the whole truck has to be held up by a 6 sq in amount of surface area when coming down on a rock? (mean Taco time, are you kidding me?) The stock plates, just like the stock bumper, is designed to fail before the stuff that really matters under it gets damaged. Protection is there to stop damage, but engineering, makes it to where knowing that eventually something WILL fail, so make it the cheap thing to be damaged first, not the expensive thing. But also, engineering stronger products, makes it to where you need to distribute that impact across the right about (and way) of surface area. That's where Bud, as a formal, experienced, engineer with specialties in material science and failure analysis makes that difference. And, I hate to say this part but in my opinion it's true, a fabricator just doesn't have the background to accomplish the right thing. And the reason I kept going to Bud, regardless of where I have been stationed for the last decade, is because I've lost a lot of money, and had to repair a lot of metal, till I found a guy that didn't just make a strong product, but made a strong product that also protected the very thing that I'm paying money to protect... that costs way more money, the truck itself.
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