I am looking for idea's on making a belly up skidplate/x-member for my XJ. After doing a search ;) , it came up empty. I have seen the one Borton has, and am looking for more idea's. Any pic's or idea's would be appreciated.

thanks,

Ken

I think it was a pretty simply affair, 3/16" plate 1" tube frame IIRC, and it covered most everything, only problem is the floor get really hot over the cat; I am working on one made from 4" channel with a plate section going back to cover the t-case

Matt

The best one that I have seen to date was on the XJ owned by one of the seattle area ARB guys. Tim Burrus was his name actually. Anyway, he took the tranny crossmember off completely and then removed the tranny mount from it. He mounted that on a large sheet of 3/16" steel (might have been 1/4") and then attached it to the frame with self-tapping bolts. Almost the whole underside was nice and smooth and it looked like he had tucked the tranny and transfer case up a little higher, but I could be wrong. Something to think about.

If you look at the title of my last post, we are talking about the same XJ, Marc built the thing when he worked for town and county in seattle, then went to ARB and sold the jeep to Tim, Marc now has a beast of a j-truck light blue to bat (Marc if you are reading this; when are you going to build that thing Huh!!), The skidplate turned out nice though, had notches for the front driveline and I cant remember if the rear cleared the edge of the plate or not?

Either one of you wouldn't happen to have any links would you? That is exactly what I have been thinking about doing. I was even considering putting a 1" mm lift in to help compensate for moving the transfer case up. I don't know if there is enough clearance for a 1" motor mount lift, I believe so, but it would be tight. I am running about 7" of lift w/33s presently, but will go to 35s when I finish installing the rear TJ flares. I think if I could go with a belly up skid plate and the 35s, it would give me almost 22" of clearance in the center of the Jeep, while keeping a reletively low center of gravity with only 7" of lift.

Thanks for the tips guys, keep them coming,

Ken

Originally posted by wanderingwillys
If you look at the title of my last post, we are talking about the same XJ, Marc built the thing when he worked for town and county in seattle, then went to ARB and sold the jeep to Tim, Marc now has a beast of a j-truck light blue to bat (Marc if you are reading this; when are you going to build that thing Huh!!), The skidplate turned out nice though, had notches for the front driveline and I cant remember if the rear cleared the edge of the plate or not?

Whoa, what are the odds of that? If I recall correctly the driveshaft cleared without any notching needed in the plate. The last time I saw it was then Tim was selling it at the last White Knuckle swap meet. I've got his old axles out of there actually. Blew that lockright up real good! I've got his number around here somewhere and I could probably get in touch with him and ask him some ?s about it, but I don't think he has it anymore. He said something about selling it because he was making a new one for his wife to wheel while he used his CJ. I don't remember 100% though. He had the 2.8L so the underside was a little different from the 4.0s and I am not sure how much more recessed everything was under the frame rails stock. Hope this helps.