RE: skid plate (little audi content)

["Buchholz, Steven" <Steven.Buchholz@kla-tencor.com>]

I have no idea about how applicable this will be, let me begin by reporting
that my 1978 Audi Fox GTI came from the factory with a grating to protect
the front of the engine.  The reason I say that I don't know how applicable
it is is that the Fox has a longitudinally mounted engine as opposed to the
VW's transverse setup.  

On the Fox the grate mounted to the subframe in the back and it had two
mounting points on the sheetmetal that runs below the bumper.  This
sheetmetal is much too weak to support such a load on its own ... Audi had a
couple of small pieces of heavy gauge plate that mounted on the outer side
of the sheetmetal (which implies that the grate attached to the back of the
piece) to help spread any load.  I'd imagine that you could adopt a similar
strategy with any sort of skid plate you wanted to fashion.  

HTH!
Steve Buchholz
San Jose, CA (USA)

> -----Original Message-----
> 
> Sweetums wants a skid plate for his truck for Christmas.  
> What should be a
> rather straight forward search isn't quite so straight 
> forward.  The truck
> is an early 80's VW Rabbit pickup with a Scirocco mechanicals 
> transplant.
> Almost everything within the engine bay has been swapped to a 
> 16V Scirocco
> engine, plus a fair bit more.  Where does the skid plate mount, on the
> engine or the chassis?  How much of a problem with fitment 
> will we have
> since almost nothing is where it was designed to be?  The 
> skid plate is
> pretty much a necessity since the power steering pump is 
> below the bumper
> clearance and in front of the wheels.  It's the lowest point 
> on the truck
> and we already lost it once on a curb while backing out of a 
> parking spot up