Offroad-Express

a guy who works next door to me wanted me to modify his trans member, keeps on getting hung up on it, tried doing what he asked , then a sod it moment , cut and bent the start of a low profile plate mount instead
the old x

two views of the plate mount

is that a surf cross member if so and you get it right, then you may have a few orders on your hands

going to get the truck dropped in next week so we wil see want we can do, need some work in the shop

I used to bend the Xmember all the time.

About 10 years ago I cut the bottom off the cross member and welded a 6mm plate and bent it up to give a leading edge that cant get caught and have had no troubles ever since and I do extreme rough stuff.

The big problem with just a flat plate is that the transfer box hangs down and has no protection and if you smash that on a boulder you are in a worse situation.

Photos taken in the dark




Cheers Richard

yes poor design , my mazda was bad too , will see what it needs when the truck turns up at work

the lux was at work when i got back tonight

reveiwed your photos bulletproof will do that mod as well to the cut stock x member

finished plate member the steel could of been wider to cover the t case
it has a 308 holden v8 and auto

Could bolt on a skid plate to that if you wanted that stretched longitudinaly to cover the t case.

Nice work too!

has a flat bar brace going forward, the engine is set back alot, told him to try it out and see what else it needs

mine is very similar but i just chucked a plate off the back to gaurd the transfer case. Not cool if ya smash that drain bung off. I now either need to drill a big hole in the small plate so i can get to the drain bung or gring off the weld and make it a bolt on plate. No fun having to remove the full x member to drain the oil
nice job.

The chain driven transfer case on mine hangs down alot lower than that one.

Cheers Richard

yes had to add a peice of 12mm lap welded to the 16mm to cover the drain as it was stiocking below the plate and could of been wiped out

That could have been lifted up at least 3 " by the looks of the pic. The drive train is on a hell angle. Who ever did his repower, should have spent a bit more time on it and used a bit more thought process.
Why bother doing this stuff unless you sort the underlying issues first.