[MattDrinan]

Made these for my Sierra
The bar was made at work and the cradle was made in a few hours at home ( pretty rough atm, needs more grinding and long arm bracing before i install)

[christover1]

nice work

[just_cruizin]

Your cradle needs a lot more bracing other it may actually put more adverse force into the mountings then it takes out. Imagine you land heavily on a rock you have protected the bottom of the case but have now added a lot more shear stress onto the bolts.

Have you raised the case at all?

It would be better to make a chassis mounted belly plate. Thus no external force other the transmission force will be imparted to the mounts

[MattDrinan]

I am raising the transfer 40mm. (Just_Cruizin) When you say more bracing do you mean to connect the factory arms to the cradle better to make the whole lot stiffer?
It does need a lot more thought put into it. I had a basic idea and just started building, I figured any bracing is better than none and having a smooth steel belly would be nice. I plan to add to it before i install (6.5's still on the way)

Thanks,

[just_cruizin]

Brace the bottom folds such that it won't spread and to the arms

[jdk81]

Dont forget a drain plug hole!!!

How far below does it hang? If you raise the xfer 40mm, you dont need a full sized skidpan and frame.

Imo raise the case, then design your cradle etc.

[just_cruizin]

IMO raise the case, fit a reinforcement ring to hold your case together and run a seperate chassis mounted skid plate

[KEENSY85]

, I'm looking at getting the mighty Kong craddle and then with the rock toy ring as well, wich would be similar to what u have done

[MattDrinan]

Haha, don't worry i didnt't forget the drain plug holes, i drilled them the next day.


It hangs about 15-20mm from bottom of case (I used the factory drain plug "shield" as the two lower mounting points).

Going to add gussets etc to stop it spreading. Those Roctoy rings are nice, when I go up in tyre sizes (running 27's atm) i will look into those.

P.S. The painters at work were going to paint my front bar but they were too busy for weeks so ended up giving it that awesome blue paint job just for the time being.

Matt

[KEENSY85]

Those rocktoy rings are $75 to the door, the bar looks good mate the clour is not my favourit but it looks very vclean

[MattDrinan]

KEENSY85 wrote:

Those rocktoy rings are $75 to the door, the bar looks good mate the clour is not my favourit but it looks very vclean

Thanks man,

Matt

[rpmwrx]

I wouldn't bother with a mighty kong cradle and roktoy ring if i was doing the mod today... I would just buy either of these...

http://www.lowrangeoffroad.com/index.ph ... radle.html

http://www.trailtough.com/index.php?pag ... &Itemid=53

Either will do the job, but I think the LROR one is better as it has the full rock ring, plus an additional mount. So it mounts in 4 spots to the chassis in lieu of 3.

[MattDrinan]

Two nice pieces of kit you mention there, RPMWRX, however I cannot justify the cost in bringing something like that over. I'll just have to learn the hard way by taking the cheaper route, although my driving style is pretty mild so I expect I wont have any problems.