rubiRI77
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Feb 3, 2021
- Threads
- 15
- Messages
- 367
- Reaction score
- 780
- Location
- scituate, ri
- Vehicle(s)
- 21 Rubicon two door. 2.0 Turbo.
So.....BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD on my engine skid plate project.Installed a TNT Customs engine skidplate. Kind of a pain. Very nice piece, but NO instructions (I emailed them and the written description of the install he gave me was vague to say the least. They really need to at least label top and bottom for their support arms. And it took a little trimming to get it to not hit the gas tank skid. OK... rant over haha!
Anyway - overall very nice piece. and I would say very close to the same weight as the factory "skidplate" that you remove top install this.
As you can see, and if you read my comments there were no instructions, no pictures, and quite a bit of room for guessing on the placement of the front support arms.
WELL!!! Went to drive it today, and did not even get out of our neighborhood. I have a pretty bumpy road and that meant Instant clunking!!! Turns out what I thought was the correct orientation of the drivers side bracket was far from correct!
The front axle was contacting it just going down the road.
As you can see from my pics, I installed this on a lift. The suspension is basically at full droop when on the lift. While I did think of this, there was no way to test it out really. Well long story short I now had about 1-1/2" of up travel available in my suspension.
So, lucky me I got to quickly turn around, put it back on the lift, and quickly put it back to stock thus erasing the 3 hours I worked on it yesterday. All while wearing nice clothes and trying not to get dirty because we needed to be somewhere. ARGHH!!
I might try again tomorrow since it is a holiday and we have no plans, but right now I am so fed up I am surprised I did not throw it in my scrap pile yet! I will try again because it is such a nice piece but the brackets leave A LOT to be desired.
Is it possible that this thing will only work with lifted Jeeps!!?? If that is the case and they don't say so on the website I will be very angry to put it really kindly.