Nooooooo bashplates again

[timothy]

Hey there guys
I made me some bashplates (thnx to buzzy )
Made them from 3mm rvs and addet some reinforcements (stil have to reinforce the diff plate)

i started making the plates after wrecking the stock plates
and that in turn wrecked my vacium activator on the front diff (there not that cheap)


had to modifie it on the front bit so it would fit under the bumperlip


you can see the shiny bit underneath where i started polishing but got fed up with after an hour
+ you can see that activator i mentioned b4(the thing with the grey tube just above the deepest point of the diffplate


cleaning it up with high speed abrasive pad



nice example of the reinforcement
in the 2pictures above
(ofcoarse i welded them with special rvs welding wire thingy)


so guys what do you think?

( btw boycee dont attempt to eat my little pitbull)
( stevie tas : i first made a expiremental plate just to see if the bends where ok first one came out 14mm to long
so i went down to the drawing bords and made a realsize drawing 'side view'
just to get the actual distances for the bends and not the control dictance like in the bleuprint
After that it all came out within tollerance
so i could start making a proper size one in rvs)

in total it put me down 120€ wich is not bad i think

[steve tas]

They look good. Only thing that worries me is welding gussets/angles/reinforcing onto the bashplates. If i was to hit something hard enough then the added bits may become detatched. i had the made out of 3mm 5005t4 ally simply for the fact that if i hit something hard enough then I will bend the plates without shearing off mounting points, which seems to be an issue with the TJM items. When i fitted my plates i was suprised at the amount of gear under the factory plates. Heaps to protect. I use my plates as an 'indicator' to weather i am going to clear an obstacle or not. If they hit, they will flex, and let me know i am too low, without doing any damage to vital bits. I never intended to do full on 4wding in my triton, mainly trips in the snow and trying to kill off bambi ancestors. I am confident they will do the job better than the factory ones without the issues of the TJM and other 'thicker' steel plates due to the 'non flex' nature of them

[timothy]

wel im hope if they bend they bend between the last bend and where the bolts are (or that clamp on third pic)

i am planning on doing a litle 'upgrade' on the mounting points

thnx for the input

[MR T]

nice work its gr8 to see people geting out there and giving it a go themselves
just one more thing that i need to find time to do

[timothy]

thnx

[Homer]

Nice job mate!

[steve tas]

Hi Timothy

Just wondering how the plates are holding up. I completely smashed my diff plate by dropping into a set of ruts and not having a choice but to power on through. Distorted the bottom plate by 50 odd mm but nothing hurt. Not too bad though.....

[koshari]

wrecked my vacium activator on the front diff (there not that cheap)

me to, $270aud for a replacement.

my protection for it dont look at nice as yours but iam sure it will do the trick, 3 bars of gridmat welded to 2 angleiron pieces that are connected to the the 4 bash plate bolts, i left the stock bash plate beneath it, ( after panel beating it back into shape).