Talons Garage 3rd Gen Full Skid Package/Cat Protection

We did a big Update on our 3rd Gen products, and finally decided on a transfer case skid plate design. (I went back and forth 100,000 times on this)

The good news is, we took a lot of what we learned from wheeling our personal rigs and put it into the design of this setup.



Starting with the front, we do things a little differently with our front skid plates. While most brands will use round tubing to mount their front skid plate, we use a big beefy bracket. (Blue in the above photo) This gives us multiple advantages.

1. Allows us to provide a 2-piece front skid that is as strong or stronger than a 1 piece.
2. Makes installation and removal easier.
3. Adds a ton of strength to the breakover point on the front skids. In this area we are now basically doubling up material, so we are getting either 1/2" of Aluminum or 3/8" of steel. Not only are we doubling up material thickness here, but the bracket also has a box design to it, giving two vertical flanges width wise to help strength this area even more. The vertical flanges are highlighted in blue below.

Our Transmission Plate/Cat Protector.

I know there are TONs of you on this forum running our Cat protection/Transmission skid plate. Many of these were made in my 3-car garage at my house when nobody else in town was making these. Well, thanks to your early on support we have managed to grow and invest in the company. No longer am I laying in my front yard measuring under a truck to create plates. This was designed using 3d Scan technology and is now CNC Laser cut and bent on a 6 axis CNC press brake. We changed our winglet shape to better match the frame. Also tightened up a few holes and tolerance. The biggest change we have made is we are now offering our reinforcing ribs. These have been a huge hit on our F-150 plates and are looking to bring them over to the Toyota side of the house.


The reinforcing ribs are highlighted in blue above. They are vertical flanges welded into the plate to help increase the strength of the transmission skid plate. These are intended for those who will off-road their Tacoma a bunch and want extra strength across the span of this plate. This will be offered on both our 3/16 steel and 1/4" aluminum versions.




Finally, our Transfer case Plate.


First, we bend it down to clear the annoying exhaust pipe that goes below the transfer case. Second, we use brackets to mount it to the frame, and have a big 2" vertical flange along the back of the plate. This helps to further increase the strength of the plate across the span.

We are excited to be offering this, and it should be on our website soon. Don’t forget that we don’t put a product on our website unless it is on the shelf and ready to ship. We know you have things to do and don’t want to wait weeks for your products after paying for them. This is why we make sure we can quickly fulfill orders once they are placed.


Let me know what questions you have, drop a photo below of the products you already have or let us know what you want to see next!

 

Does the full skid set up with 3rd gen access cab 2.7s??

 

This is a good question. I think we ran into this issue before. The 4 cylinder 4x4 truck actually had a different distance between two crossmembers. Shoot me a PM and I can get you a photo of where we need to measure.

 

I have a question that will get me some dirty looks.... does this work with the OEM sport front valance? I dont rock crawl or anything, but I ice fish and driving on frozen lakes can result in hitting big ice shelfs that push up.

 

when you say front valance are you referring to the front plastic bumper and air damn?

If so yes. We get that some people want protection from derbies, and might only go on fire roads or dirt trails, but might also want to keep their factory front air damn for the fuel economy.

 

This big beautiful hunk of black plastic that hangs down in the front and gets me that sweet sweet mpg back after lifting my truck. but yea, I rarely hit anything head on that is high enough to contact it, but ice shifts as you drive on it, and can pop up into the oil pan area pretty quick.

 

Yep, our plates fit with that no problem!

That’s honestly a big reason why my truck doesn’t have a sweet front bumper on it. Those air damns apparently make a pretty big difference on the MPG’s!

 

Sweet, Ill have to add this to my list then.

Yeah the airdam actually helps alot on lifted trucks with bigger tires. After my lift and tires I was getting 19ish on the highway, after putting it on I can get up to 23 mpg on the highway and am loving it.

 

My Cat guard / transmission skid has worked great so far. Many people in my parking lot have had their cats stolen, but not me. I was also able to ziptie the AC drain mod to some of the holes in the skid plate.

One design element I'm not sure about is the frame crossmember coming on the bottom side of the plate. If I ever want to get those bolts out, it might be a challenge since I found a boulder with the skid plate a few weeks ago on slaughterhouse gulch. The bolts would be exposed either way though, so there might be no getting around that.

Pumped that you guys are doing the transfer case skid now as well, I drag that exhaust crossmember across rocks all the time and either need to reroute it, protect it, or both.


Frame cross member got pretty scraped up, including one of the bolts.


Skid plate doing its job.

 

Any way I can exchange my gen 1 ‘wings’ for the updated version? I was planning to take them to a machine shop to have them modified to fit around the drain valves.

 

I would be interested in this as well. No one makes a 2.7 plate

 

If you guys can offer a 4cyl compatible version, you will be the only guys on the market selling one. I actually bought your front skid earlier this week and was planning to fab the rest... Help

 

I am pretty sure for the 4 Cylinder truck our 2wd plate fits.

Now we haven't updated that one yet, but likely will as soon as we scan a 2wd truck.

 

Since @Talon2006 is ignoring me, I guess that's a no.

 

Hey, did you end up measuring and figuring out 4cyl compatibility?

 

Not yet, waiting on measurement points confirmation.

Shall report back!

 

Thank you, you're the man. I'll keep an eye out.

 

us 2tr-fe 2.7L gang need to stick together

 

Wasn't ignoring anyone! Just got busy and forgot to come back. We can check and see if we have a spare set somewhere if you want to buy a set. Typically we make them in sets so we don't get extras often.

I need to get those to you!

 

Planning to get the steel front skid with the aluminum cat protector. Just checking to make sure you can mix and match ?