Protecting the Underside of your UTV with UHMW Skid Plates

| October 28, 2009 | 0 Comments

Rock Crawling on the Strawberry Pass Trail

We have some big adventures planned for our 2010 Polaris RZR S and I wanted to make sure we didn’t beat it up more than necessary. The underside protection on the Polaris RZR is decent for logging roads and sand dunes, but I take my UTVs on rock crawling trips to the Rubicon, Moab, Johnson Valley and it has already been on the Strawberry Pass Trail.

The factory skid just isn’t up to the task when the entire weight of the vehicle is sliding across its belly. And after our first trip on Strawberry Pass Trail (pretty tame actually), I noticed some scrapes on the a-arms. Now a few scrape on the powder coat don’t bother me at all, but a good hit to the lower a-arm could put a big dent in it (just ask my friend Dave). A-Arm skids not only help spread out a blow from a rock and protect them from damage when an arm is forced to slide across a rock, but they also make the bottom of the arm flat and slippery so rocks can’t get stuck up in the arm.

Factory UTV was one of the first in the UTV market to make skid plates for UTVs out of a product called UHMW. UHMW is short for Ultra High Molecular Weight and is an extremely durable polymer that is used in many applications where abrasion resistance (the ability to slide over a rock) and impact resistance is critical. UHMW is much better suited to skid plate as compared to typical aluminum, because the material does not stick to rocks, has some amount of give and it will return to normal position after a hit.

The Factory UTV skid plate is pre-drilled for oil change and drainage and uses existing and supplied hardware for installation. All mounting locations are recessed so that hardware stays out of harms way. Skids are made from 3/8″ or 1/2″ and I opted for the thicker material because of the abuse it would be taking.

Factory UTV also makes some slick a-arm guards out of UHMW. This stuff can be formed up and around the arm to protect the arm and the CV boot. How cool is that?