Chassis Under body protection for extended dirt road driving.

[Herbertclan]

Hi all, as per the title,

Looking at what I should be doing under the van for protection. I'm conscious of adding additional weight so was looking at options that are of the lighter variety. I'm not looking at a long term solution but do want to protect the underside of out outback ready for the Great Central road, there will be other off-road/dirt driving but this will certainly be the bulk of it.

Any pictures or ideas you want to share would be great.

Cheers Max,

 

[Dobbie]

I'd start with some old hose and visit Bunnings for some black aircon lagging and a pile of cable ties.

Get under the van with the split hose and the lagging and the cable ties and cover any pipe or line that you can see....not the handbrake. Cable tie it. Use expanding foam for and gaps around pipes etc.

Then, at night, get under the van, turn on the lights, and look for anything you missed.

Then visit the chiropractor to get the kinks out.

We've done this on a few vans and had no problems with damage or dust. Dome use spray stuff under the whole van as well but that can be messy unless you can get it on a hoist.

 

[Drover]

I've sleeved all my water lines with water pipe/AC lagging, found it easier to just undo the water lines and feed them thru the hose, a good time to improve the layout as well, when i had a couple of lines running together i used some grey water hose, the light corrugated stuff from Bunnings, $10 for 15mts, and ran em thru that.........hung old mud flaps in front of the water tank outlets to stop rocks and sprayed the floor with sound deadener or chassis black to give the floor better protection than the poor paint job.

I did have a full width mud flap at the front of a van but while it stopped a fair bit of mud it would hit in some culverts and just flick more rocks similar to those that some string across the back of their tugs, in some dips they will throw extra rocks .
Also sleeved the brake lines that ran along the axles, just used clear tube with zip ties but made sure they allowed for movement but also so they don't get caught by any road debris.

Better mud flaps for the wheels does a heap of good also.

If you have a tap on the draw bar make sure the line is covered and there is a stone plate in front of it.

 

[Herbertclan]

Thanks guy's,

Plenty of good info, didn't think of the under body mud flaps flicking up more debris when dragging through the dips.

Cheers,