Skid Plate

The sliders I had made were protecting my link ends and transmission just as I had designed them to do. There were scraped up so I'm glad I had them but at the last comp I got killed by being hung up on stuff. I decided to take them off and go a different direction. The original setup I had with the "Stage I Conversion" actually worked OK as far as sliding on the chassis but I didn't want to leave the tranny unprotected. I also didn't want it to get hung up on any jagged rocks, so I decided to just make a skid plate. I tried a few things with aluminum angle and flat plate but I had problems filling in around the transmission. I started to just fill everything in with JB weld when I remembered some cutting board I had left over from another project.

PARTS & SUPPLIES NEEDED
1/2" Poly cutting board

TOOLS
Dremel with cutting discs
Jigsaw (optional)
Drill
Gold paint pen
Painters mask



1. The first thing to do is to take some measurements and cut out the piece you will use for the skid. My initial piece was about 1.5"x 2.25". I cut it a little big because I knew I could always take more off.


2. Once I had the approximate size I started removning material with the dremel. I found that if I used the cutting discs and went slowly the poly wouldn't melt ... but it would make a lot of mess and create a weird dust so make sure you wear a mask of some sort.

3. After each set of cuts I would use the paint pen to mark the transmission and then press the skid on it so I could see what else had to be cut away.



4. I also had to do some cutting to clear the tranny output yokes.


5. Here are a few installed shots. As you can see it's a nice flush finish up against the tranny and doesn't hang below the frame at all. I still need to go back and clean it up a little but it'll do for now.


I also mounted my links without the spacers so that they are right against the chassis. This should also help me slide over things even when they are running down the side of the link. The potential downfall to this setup is that the chassis plates are exposed so I expect them to take some abuse. Hopefully they last long enough that I won't be constantly replacing them but they are cheap and I think it's worth the tradeoff.