One of my favorite things to do is fabricate. Because of that I'm somewhat a hoarder of metal I think I might be able to use in the future. Today that hoarding helped and hindered my idea to build a skid plate for my boxster with the a low sitting motor. What should have taken me an hour to make turned into 3. The only big flat steel I had laying around was a skid plate off a F350. I spent way too much time making it work. The easier route would be to use some fresh sheet metal, bend it, drill some holes and then cut to shape. Bam it's that easy. Using what I had took a little more effort. I had to butt weld two pieces together and do lots of grinding, wire brushing and cleaning to get my skid plate built. At least it was free. So here's almost the final product. I'm hoping to paint tomorrow if I have time.
Right now the only thing holding it on are the two front bolts. I had thought about using the boss's on the side of the motor but decided against it for now.
If I attach the plate to them too, I'm thinking I want it to be pretty flimsy as I don't want them to break off and ruin the case if I do hit something hard. As of right now I have these rubber mounts in-between the plate and the sump.
The steel I'm using is around 14 gauge. My theory is that if I hit anything it will be when I'm going forward and the purpose of the plate is to deflect the impact and not catch onto the pan or block. It's not like i'm rock crawling with the car. I'm thinking the two bolts in the front should be enough to hold the plate in position for what I most likely will hit.