opinions on oil skids

SKids mounted to just the engine are not necessarily junk, I would say avoid tera flex's and the hokey glue on one I have seen both bend and peel up to the point of being useless. Skid row is good nth degree is good and can be made better. If you don't have the cash now for either just save yourself money and heartache and wait until youcan afford them

Any skid is better than none. Although the sump region is the most prone to catch a rock since it hangs the lowest, it is not the only vulnerable place. Aaron punctured his oil plan near the front of the engine. When he came off a Nueroc obstacle hard his front suspension flexed enough to allow the hydraulic steering to dent the front of his oil pan. The dent was deep enough that the crank wore a hole in the pan within seconds.

I have also noticed a nice dent in the front of my oil pan caused when my front diff came up high enough to shove the differential breather fitting into the pan. I have since changed pipe fitting styles.

I have the skidrow engine skid and it seems to hold up pretty well.. but i did bend it a little on my last trip to paragon.. other than that it has the usual scrapes and dents any normal skid plate would on an otherwise stock TJ

Not to get off subject or hurt anyone's feelings BUT...

YJ's were produced from 87-95. In that time maybe, MAYBE one or two engine skids existed. The reason is that the YJ oil pan is around 4 to 6 inches higher than the tj pan. It wasn't until the Tj came out that all the yj guys even knew they were missing something.

Now don't get me wrong, I have seen a YJ oil pan get smacked good (cough, cough NikkiYJ), but for most it might be unnecessary at this stage.

Artie

Just curious why you would even think of using titanium in a jeep application

Just a thought but the less stress put on the engine the better. When you hit the skid mounted to the engine the shock is transferred to the motor mounts and then to the frame. :question: So why not just mount them to the frame.

Quote from "GOTMUDD02"

well the fact that its lighter and a whole lot stronger than steal about covers it. :yevil:

You mention using titanium bolts, the difference in weight between a few bolts even if they were aluminum would be miniscule.

Also, those super strong bolts might not break, but something will and it would probably be the engine block.

Sounds like a bad idea to me.

Just my $.02 as a wannabe engineer.

Sounds more like he wants to make the whole pan out of titanium....

Quote from "GOTMUDD02"

You got it Ed I dont want to fab up titanium bolts I want to do the skids out of titanium :grin:

I guess if you had it laying around I could see it.

A 24"x24"x.250" piece of steel plate weighs 40.83 lbs.

Titanium would weigh 23.48 lbs.

Wouldn't be worth buying it to save that little bit of weight. Not on a Jeep that could easily weight 4K lbs.

Quote from "GOTMUDD02"

Well lets put it this way I am not doing it because of the weight although it is an added benifit, and I would'nt do it if it was heavier but it is alot stronger than steel. My uncle siad he can get some for me for a good price and he would do the fabin for me. I havent featherd out all the details yet but it looks like it will be cheaper for me to do that than to buy all of them out of Q-tec or somewhere else.

IMHO I think it'd be a waste to fab these in titanium...1/4 steel is plenty strong for a skid and is cheap! One thing to to keep in mind if you're serious about the TI is the welding process is more complicated than steel...it's very senstive to contaminents, although MIG can be used TIG is preferred and you _must_ backpurge the weld w/ argon or an argon/helium mix.

--Ian

Here are two things to consider before making the skid out of titanium. First is what I like to call the sledge hammer and finish nail theory. Sure the Titanium is stronger than plate steel but this presents problems. Look at bumpers and consider why they are not made of the thickest materials possible. The answer is found in energy transfer, with an engine skid made of 3/16" steel, you will have some of the energy transfer from a hard hit into bending of the steel. Look at most commercially available engine skids and you will see they are made from 3/16 instead of 1/4. This lessens the stress on mounting points with some energy transfer going to the deformation of the skid. With you mounting points most likely being on the bellhousing, lessening the stress loads on those points is probably in your best interest.

Point 2 is mounting hardware, most bolts available these days contain cadmium, mixing cadmium and titanium causes a di-electric reaction where in both metals start corroding at a faster rate than normal. I am sure you can get around this with special hardware but this also adds to the cost of the skid.

Now if you can get teh materials and special hardware and the fabrication done for less than a steel skid than what the hell but if it is even close, I would go with steel.