Skid Plate

[GhostMercury]

I love my RallyArmor mud flaps, and a while ago, while looking around their site I came across the skid plate for the STI's. I had my car on the lift this weekend because we were installing coilovers, and it let me see how bad the MN winters, and deep snow have destroyed the undercarriage plastics. We had to ziptie a bunch of the pieces up and a few pieces had been broken off. Sooooo now I want a skid plate like the STI's. I'm not looking for a 1/4 inch think off road monster skid plate, just something a little more rigid then the plastic crap, that can hold up to the MN winters.

Obviously the MS3 has nothing to mount a skid plate to like the STI, so I have been trying to think of a way to go about adding a skid plate to the MS3's underbody. So my thinking has finally gotten me somewhere when I came across the turbinetech front motor mount. Looking at this picture,

You can see how the FMM creates a cage around the engine and trans. I was thinking about using that as the frame/structure to mount the plate to.

Now what I have to figure out is,
-Does the FMM structure hang below the motor and trans?
-Will having a sheet of metal there cause the engine bay to retain excess heat?
-Will the FMM structure be strong enough to act as a mount for a skid plate?
I figure it doesn't need to be too strong because it was just plastic there originally, and I'm not off roading, I'm just stopping snow from ripping everything apart. Obviously some will not get the point of this, but for the others hopefully we can pool together some thoughts and ideas

 

[Ems3]

Corksport makes one for the ms3s. It replaces both plastic pieces with a single sheet

http://www.corksport.com/corksport-04-09-mazda-3-mazdaspeed-3-skidplate.html

 

[GhostMercury]

Some of the things I dislike about it is that it is half the thickness of the RallyArmor piece, and it's still only supported by the plastics. But I would like to hear what someone who has one has to say. I'm not ruling it out, just wanted something tougher perhaps.

 

[Ems3]

I agree with you it does seem a bit too thin. Plus theres openings and what not.

 

[GhostMercury]

Yea, if you read the description on the RallyArmor site they talk about how they purposely don't have any holes or notches in the skid plate to prevent it from getting caught in anything. I might have to e-mail corksport to see if they can post a video of their skid plate to see how strong, or flimsy it is.

 

[Wurf]

Dude....090 is plenty thick. Personally .040 would have been what I would have used if I were making it myself but .090 is great. Mounting it to the plastic at the front is fine too, if you ask me. Consider the number of fasteners used, and the direction of the stress against this thing. I think it would be plenty strong. Living in MI I can identify with bad winter roads, ice chunks, road kill, and all the other debris this thing will encounter and to me, the Corksport looks like the perfect solution. This is what I would buy if I wasn't making my own, which isn't worth the effort.

 

[GhostMercury]

Well I saw some more pictures of the CS skidplate and it does look decently thick. I just don't like how it's still only supported by plastic in the front. I don't wana hit something and have it rip apart my bottom bumper as well.

 

[Ems3]

The front three bolts that hold the skid plate go straight into the bottom of the radiator. They're pretty long too. I think they should hold it on well. Turbo XS uses these bolts as a mounting position for the bottom brackets on their core. I tried to move the core after I installed it and it was really sturdy so I'm sure the front of the skid plate should be secure enough to take a good hit

 

[R242]

The CS skidplate is very tight to the car, each securing point is heavy duty, I believe 3 17mm(or 15mm head) bolts to the subframe in the back, 4 slightly smaller bolts near the wheelwell, same place the oem sidplate attached to those "legs" and the 3 radiator bolts in the front reuse existing threaded clips with hard rubber spacers for shock absorption, I actually used jamnuts on top rather than reuse the clips from the plastic shield, sturdy.