RC4WD CChand Transfer Case Guard for Traxxas TRX-4

I tried the Yeah Racing skid plate because this was out of stock, and that one was ok except for having a lousy mounting setup without a good solid foundation, plus it is small and thin. I wouldnt recommend that one. When these became available I ordered one and it's much nicer, bigger and mounts much better to the truck as it uses screws through the framerails so there is no way it can be flimsy. The downside to that is the slight loss in ground clearance, but because of the nice smooth surface it allows the truck to slide over most obstacles much better than the stock plastic skid does. Also, the weight that this skid adds is in a good place so that wont hurt performance at all. The only other skid I want to try is the Bowhouse V2 as it creates far more clearance than the stock one as it is formed to the bottom of the tranny/tranfercase and is shaped so there is no empty space above it, creating the absolute most clearance under the center of the truck. However, to do that it's neither flat nor smooth plus being that it's 3D printed, that material feels like plastic with a 220 grit sandpaper surface which I think would cause the skid to want to "grab" certain obstacles like sharp points of rocks rather than slide over like this smooth stainless skid would. Lastly the Bowhouse moves pretty much everything up between the framerails, which leaves the 4 outer link mounts/ends hanging down as the lowest part of the truck, wich I would think would cause them to get hung up easily and/or cause the plasic rod ends and that part of the skidplate to wear quickly, again because its made of plastic. I could be wrong which is why I want to try it out too.

The day I picked up my TRX-4 Defender I grabbed a bunch of aftermarket oarts and mods, one of which was the Bowhouse low cg battery tray and chassis brace and their battery tray IMO is a must have mod, probably the best $30.00 performance upgrade you can get for the TRX-4 especially of you run full sized 5000mah 2s or 3s stick lipo's, and even if you run the small and light Protek 3s shorty batteries like I do it still helps a good bit as it moves a heavy object forward and lower, but I just feel that the best option and performance option for a skidplate is larger, flat, smooth and a hard metal like stainless steel.

I will say that other than the RC4wd Warn winch and 2 wired winch controllers I picked up with my truck, this skid are the only RC4wd products that Ive bought and used and not had them break right away or simply find that the quality is far below what other brands offer. Ive had 2 metal bumpers that broke off the mounts in under 10 minutes of running, failing in a place where I couldnt repair either, a set of rock sliders that had parts that were so small and fragile they had no business being near an RC vehicle and a $140.00 set of aluminum 2.2" beadlocks that while looked cool from 2 or more feet away had multiple issues all based around quality and basically would only have worked for a shelf queen display truck after using a bunch of superglue to hold screws and parts on. Compared to the 4 sets of Vanquish beadlocks I had by that point these appeared to have been machined on a Friday at 4:45pm by an alcoholic who had a half rack waiting in his car and was getting off work in 15 minutes... If they were even 60% the quality of the Vanquish stuff I would have been happy, but thats not the case. Ill assume this skid is nice because its one stamped shaped piece of metal and has no moving parts or screws etc to mess up lol.

The only reason I gave 4 stars instead of 5 is because for a small piece of stainless steel thats worth maybe $1.50 before it gets stamped and pressed into its shape in probably under 5 seconds, $39.00 is probably twice what I would expect it to cost and 3 times what it really should cost. But not much is "cheap" in RC... If it were under 30 bucks it would get 5 stars...