River Raider or Rock Hard. I see River Raider may have some clearance issues, Rock Hard pros/cons? I'm looking to replace all stock skid plates, need to work with lift

 

If I'm not mistaken, the River Raiders give you just about better than stock clearance.

 

I have the rock Hard skids for the transmission / oil pan and the transfer case going on Friday. Looks like a solid quality product. Might look at the gas tank skid too but the stock is holding up well. Made sure I changed the transfer case oil as you would have to remove it once it is on.

 

I've got the Rock Hard engine, tranny & transfer case skids, the poison spyder evap skit, rugged ridge front end skid and skidrow offroad upper front skid. Dang it's a lot of skidding.

I like the Rock Hard skids, tough (but heavy), but you gotta protect your jeep. It's easier with someone helping you because they are heavy. I ended up using a floor jack to hold up the engine/tranny skid. They take a little time to install, but they are well worth the effort.

I have mine on with a 3" OME lift with no problems.

 

I've gone through both RH and RR skids and there's good and bad with both. Rock Hard's solid, but it's two gigantic pieces of metal you throw on down there. If you have to do anything to the transmission or t/c, you have to first drop the front skid before you can drop the t/c skid. Add in some rocker guards that attach to the frame and it becomes some real work to do anything down there. If you have to access your t/c, transmission or front of the rear driveshaft and you've added on a great deal of labor to your efforts.

Now on to RR: I apologize to you fans out there, but I'm less than impressed. Kenny seems to put out a great deal of stuff with less than stellar product development. The attaching hardware for his skids is pure shit. Allen pan head bolts? Really? They look cool until you scrape a rock with one. Then you have to cut or grind the damn thing off to remove the skid. In the front he uses tapered allen head bolts with rubber bushings to hold the front of the transmission skid to the rear of the oil pan skid. Have those fall out while trying to walk up The Wall on Poughkeepsie. Plus there was no clearance between the tranny pan and the exhaust crossover. My last gripe is I could not get the transfer case skid to fit without some serious reaming out of a couple of the holes.

Both of those skid sets retain a great deal of extra heat and create quite a few extra rattles. Right now I'm running RR engine skid, Rock Krawler's transmission pan and RR's transfer case skid. I'd have gone back to the stock transfer case skid, but it's long gone. I traded Rock Hard's engine/tranny skid and transfer case skid for a tattoo and RR's transmission skid and the RockHard gas tank skid are lying in my junk pile. It's easy to add on a bunch of extra weight for little to no return. I'm not convinced we need an extra fuel tank skid and that the stock t/c skid really needs to be replaced.

I believe at this point that all you really need to cover is your oil pan and transmission and the rest of the stock stuff is more than sufficient. Apologies for the length of this post and good luck with whatever you decide.

 

I replaced all my plates with Skidrow Offroad plates. Sturdy and no problems with my lift. Seem to work very well. Got them from Skidrow and they were very helpful and easy to deal with.

 

I'm just going with custom made ones. It's ridiculous how much companies charge for tiny ass steel plates. Getting mine much cheaper and with more coverage. Diff covers are about the only piece of undercarriage armor i'll be buying that's mass produced.

 

Me and my fabricating buddy still need to look at what needs to be protected and the dimensions. Prob will have something drawn/fabbed up within a month. Plus we're going to work on flat fenders in steel and aluminum.

 

very nice. I need to look into a lightbar as well. Just interested in making some nice skids and fenders since I havent really seen any that are currently in production that I liked for the money. JK skids are way overpriced IMO for what you get in return. Might have to look into making some sliders too if I have the time/money.

 

Thanks for the honesty, I've was wondering about the bolts on RR and the overall what's really needed factor -