Valhalla’s Shield theft deterrent/skid plates info and ordering post

Ordered 11/27, delivered yesterday, and installed today. Fit and finish are perfect and it went on pretty easily -- even with the TRD Pro skid plate and no nut plate. No rattles or creaking even over some rather abrupt speed bumps.

Thanks Tyler. It was worth the wait...

Dave

 

I shipped out all the bare steel I had this past week. I made it to late January or the beginning of February. I picked up a partial load of red and white powder coated plates today, I will get the rest of them about Wednesday.

The black powder coated plates are coming! I am supposed to get a trailer full dropped off today.
I was packing up plates before I got told I needed to take the kids to a birthday party… I will be working on getting these plates out all weekend.

 

I almost threw in a nut plate with this order

 

Props to everyone installing the cat plates with the TRD skid plate and not using the nut plate. It makes the install so much easier.

 

Looks awesome Dave, worth the wait indeed... I'm so close to being top of the list Ordered 12/5/21, really holding out my travels to Baltimore and WDC... Andrews AFB til a few weeks for business...Can't wait to get these installed for peace of mind protection...

 

For the most part, I will be clearing all orders into January in the next week or 2

 

Actually, since I didn't want to drop the TRD Pro skid plate just to remove the spacers on the rear bolts so they didn't rattle around in the frame, I ended up just using the existing hex bolts there instead of the pentagon bolts that you sent. Not having the nut plate will make those hex bolts harder to get off since the top nuts will just spin in place unless they can get a wrench on them. Probably not worth the effort and they'll just move along to an easier mark.

Dave

 

Any tips on how your held those top nuts while tightening? Any particular type of wrench used?

 

Just a standard combo wrench and some determination...

 

Installing mine today !!! Can’t wait !!!

 

So if you have an RCI skid, you need this top plate?

Order: R641974171 | Date: 2022-02-17

if this hasn’t gone out, can you please throw one in and bill me?

 

You can order it on my website separately, it will ship with your order

 

Thank you. It’s added.

Could I suggest on the order page part where it asks if you have a TRD Pro skid you add “or RCI/aftermarket skid”?

Looking forward to getting these. Wish I would have ordered them a few weeks ag

 

@Claasy63 - Assuming I read your updates above correctly, the steel black powder coat shields are being shipped out sometime soon. Would you please check on order # R066675090 for me? Not pushing it but curious. Thank you.

 

OP, just an estimate on how far out a bare steel set would be if ordered today. THANKS

 

Its not necessary. It's just for ease of installation if you can't get in there. I installed mine without any issues, but I also worked on aircraft and jet engines so small spaces are not a challenge for me lol.

 

I like easy. Plus it has to come off to grease the driveshaft.

 

Your order was for February 2nd, it depends where I run out of plates, but supposedly I am supposed to have more steel in less than 2 weeks

 

I think that was regarding my order. If so I'm good with that. Thank you for looking!

 

Fed ex is having issues and I can’t create labels… I have plates packed but can’t make labels. I am hoping that it is fixed tomorrow so I can go to town shipping plates out

 

Since I couldn’t ship anything, my nephew talked me into working on his bumper.

Pretty much done now, I need to take the bumper off and weld it out, add some structural support, and fab a skid plate insert. I am hoping to have this done and sent to powder coat in the next week or 2

 

65 deg day in the armpit of the midwest today. Got the front skid and the front cat plate on. Ordered the back plate (I was waiting to see if the next version wouldn't impede the transfer case.

Can we order a second socket? Not that I need one now but I have a bad habit of losing something if I only have a single.

Edit: uploaded pics

 

I've been holding off buying the cat shield but my next door app is blowing up recently with people getting their cats stolen.
Skidplate + Front & rear cat protection here we come... sigh

 

Send me a message

 

Thank you Tyler !!! Love it !!!

 

Ditto

 

Still having issues with fed ex… I can’t even get through to them on the phone…

 

Finally installed front and rear plates today on my '21 4x4 platinum with the TRD skid plate. Took 90 mins. Hardest part was removing the two skid plate bolts due to the paper thin lock washers on the top of the bolts. Thanks to a previous post way back in this thread that recommended bending the heck out of the lock washers and clamping with vice grips to remove the bolts. I also found a extra surprise piece threaded on the bolt that I didn't see in any previous post so I wanted to share some pics.

Once I removed the lock washers, I pulled the bolt and skid plate down as much as I could and then inserted the needle nose vice grips in the gap between the skid plate and the frame to clamp the tube that was slipped over the bolt and removed the bolt. Good theft deterrent I guess. Pics of the hardware from removing these bolts attached.

I did buy the nut plate and replaced the bolts with Pentagon security bolts. Otherwise, anyone who isn't replacing the skid plate bolts could just loosen them, install the cat shields and tighten them back up without all the BS noted above. Nut plate worked like a charm, well worth the cost to save the time and frustration of installation and future maintenance.

Original bolts for the skid plate are 15mm.

After those were removed, I removed the black transmission shield. Those bolts are 12MM and came off easily.

Next went to work installing the shields with no issues after that.

For prep, I used a foam sanding block to smooth all the edges and painted the angle braces with black Steelit to match the frame.

Thank you Tyler for an incredible product. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions about the nut plate. Very very happy I ended up purchasing that.

So far, no rattle, no creaking.

 

I can take pictures of plates I install or I have and it doesn’t make me feel anything, but seeing customer’s pictures, that gives me some pride, I love y’all

 

Have to say, these are the first pics I've seen that shows that the plates hang that far below the frame. That's a little concerning. Have they always been like this?

I know combining the skid with it makes for no places a rock or other object could grab the plate & potentially damage it or break it free. But it looks like there's a couple areas on the side where this could happen - circled below:



Also, in reverse, the entire rear plate, as well as those two spots, could be subject to hitting something. Could a solution maybe be to bend about an inch or so of the metal up at an angle so objects would be more prone to deflect rather than get caught? Did I describe that well? Does it make sense?