We finally got our skid plates installed!

We finally got our skid plates installed on our '17 TRDOR!

We've always believed that skids should be one of the very first mods you do on your overland/offroad rig, but for some reason we didn't get around to it until last weekend. We now have a nice, cozy, feeling knowing our underside is protected.

Just like we did with our '07 FJ Cruiser, we went with a set from RCI Offroad. On it they've held up fantastically under some very harsh conditions. Not just banging into rocks and such but road salt too!

The install went much better than on the FJ. The FJ was about eight years old when we did it and had been a daily driver for over 200,000 miles so every bolt that held the stock skids on snapped off, leaving us to drill and tap out the busted bolts. It wasn't pretty. The 4r is still in its infancy with well under 20,000 on the ticker. All the bolts came out and the new ones went in perfectly. Our only regret was not hosing more of the mud off that we picked up during a recent offroad adventure.

For the 4Runner we went with steel. RCI Offroad does make them in aluminum as well but we liked the price and availability of the steel ones. They came with all new hardware and a set of instructions for each plate; engine, transmission, and transfer-case, along with a cross-member to hold the back side of the transfer-case skid. In our opinion they are the best quality skid plates available, otherwise they wouldn't be on both our rigs.

If you're interested in seeing the details of installing a set of skid plates on a 5th Gen, we produced a video that's up on our YouTube channel and will be shared on our build thread too, very soon.

 

Nice, you may want to look into the RCI lower control arm skids too, i put them on with stock skids, fit with a little trimming, but will prevent another disaster from happening. A rock went up broke my driver side axle, and broke the front diff, and made it leak. 8k repair, luckily coverd by insurance, but was out of a truck for a month.