Hyde skid plate
 

After folding my CRD plate like a pretzel I went against my better judgement and picked up a Hyde plate from Jack at Road Track & Trail. Pain in the ass to mount at first, but once my brain engaged it went on easy. I was a little nervous about a plastic skidder protecting the underbelly in rocky sections, but after a 2 hour hare scramble yesterday without a clutch half way through and ramming into everything on the trail the Hyde gets a thumbs up from me. It slides over logs like butter and I whacked some rocks pretty hard without any damage occuring to anything.
My two cents,
D

How is the coverage? Can you post a photo?

I like the CRDs coverage, but its too thin and weak.

I photo the dirty girl tonight. Coverage is great, with the skid plate cover the water pump and coming up right to the edge of both sides of the cases. Photos will explain all, I'll be sure to snap a few bad photos tonight.

From the photos on the corporate site for hyde development - the coverage looks good.

Here are a couple of pics for the skid plate alone, plus a couple of pics of the skid plate + the pipe guard.

jeff

p.s. I modified the setup for the board so that thumbnails are displayed by default - click the thumbnails below to see the full photo in it's own window.

Has anyone used the combination skid plate/pipe guard?

The pictures off the Website are better than mine. I'm going to be trying a pipe guard when they arrive, but haven't as of yet. A member of my club is the distributor of them, so I'll let you know when they arrive. The pictures look hideous, but he assures me they don't look like that in real life.

Sooo,do they look like that in real life or ? ? ?

Is the mounting any better than the CRD ? I find that with every casing on a log/rock on the CRD will move the plate further backwards and it will eventually drop off the back where it hooks on the frame rail. There is nothing to stop it from moving backwards except for the front mount which is real soft alloy and cannot be tightened enough. I was going to make that front bracket piece out of better metal, but now it seems the plate is bent enough to need a body shop to straighten it out.

That pipe guard is beyond ugly tho.

cdn280,

I did just that, duped the mounts in stainless so they can be tightened better. I also added a centering bar in the back that is captured by the frame when tightened, preventing the rear of the plate from shifting sideways or rearward. Works good, but the plate is still too soft and wimpy for my terrain.

Hyde skid plate
 

after going thru 2 flatland plates per year and waiting for the crd plate for 3 months I broke down and tried the plastic Hyde. The coverage is great. The mounting on my 06 300 was a little bit of a pain in the ass, the pipe rubber mount was hard to line up. I think my bracket was bent. The first time out my pipe burnt a hole in the skid plate, but after ridding lots and lots of riverbeds full of rocks the skid plate works great!!! no ratteling no loose mounting brackets, no bent mounting brackets, just a bunch of scratches. I don't know how well it will protect my frame from bending under the engine because it was allready bent. and it covers the water pump great. Watch out the first time you do a off camber log jump in the rain!! The skid plate is so smooth on the btm that you grind like a skate board on a grinding pipe, it is really slippery 3 brocken ribs later . this skid plate is unreal