Skid Plate

Well, I received the skid plate today with the sliders but one downside - NO HARDWARE! So I can't install it until the guy I bought it from comes back from vacation and sends me the bolts and bushings. In the meantime I decided to do a little work on the skid plate since it was a little beat up.

Here are the pics of what it looked like originally:







I used a brillo pad to take the dirt and the loose paint off and used a sander to take out most of the deep gashes. The back side was actually just full of dirt mostly so I used the brillo pad to clean it off quite a bit. This is what it looked like afterwards:

The toyota genuine label that was painted over actually showed after I cleaned it with the brillo pad! Amazing. It looks pretty good underneath. I vacuumed all the loose dirt off and used a wet towel to wipe it down.

I gave it a nice coat of rubberized coating to match the Demello sliders. I bought this stuff called Plasti Dip at Home Depot since Larry had used this before on a bicycle part and I liked how it looked. It comes in a handy spray can or regular paint can. I bought the spray but you have to be very careful because the fumes are horrible and it should be done in a well ventilated area. I used the garage but I held my breath most of the time and went inside the house between coats.



A couple of coats of Plasti Dip later and it's starting to look pretty decent. Still very wet.

Four coats later and all dry. Besides the the dent in the front no noticable scratches or deep grooves. I might give it a couple more coats. If you look at it closely you will be able to tell though. Matches up pretty well with the rock sliders. I decided to spray the other side since it looked so good.

Here's the final product. Now I only need the hardware to install this thing!





Notice I blocked out the Toyota genuine part sticker from being sprayed. :) Not too shabby for $75 shipped and $16 for the cans of Plasti Dip considering a new plate would be over $300!