Important Note: Direct fit for 2005-2015 Xterra's only - Frontier and Pathfinder versions coming soon. At this time, the front 3 skid plates of this set will fit the Frontier and Pathfinder, however skid plates 4 and 5 will require modification.
This is a welded skid plate set for the 2nd generation (2005-2015) Nissan Xterra. Just add the paint or coating of your choice and bolt them on. This 5-piece set mounts using all factory mounting points (no drilling required) and provides excellent protection of the radiator, front differential, engine oil pan, steering rack, transmission, transfer case and gas tank. Nothing under your Nissan is left unprotected. To maximize ground clearance, we use a front plate that tucks in as close to the frame as possible, providing the best approach angle of any skid plate set on the market. We've added tons of sheet metal bends at the highest impact area as well as multiple welded ribs that run the length of the skid set. The photos show a pre-welding mock up. However on your skid plate set, all seams between bent flanges will be welded shut for additional strength. These features make these skid plates drastically stronger than other skid plates on the market which are simply bent into shape with little to no reinforcements and inadequate mounts. Ensure that your vehicle's expensive drivetrain components are protected from the sheer force of its own weight!
When designing this skid plate set, we set out to strike the optimum balance of protection, ground clearance and weight. While this skid plate set provides total protection of the engine, drivetrain and gas tank components, it at the same time avoids covering any areas that are unnecessary. This minimizes the size of the low-points that the skid plates create as well as keeps the weight as low as possible. In fact, this entire set weighs 149lbs in 3/16″ steel or 51lbs in 3/16″ aluminum, which helps preserve your vehicles payload capacity and fuel economy. This is especially noteworthy when you consider the amount of reinforcements we’ve used in the high impact areas of this skid plate set. We also give you the option to mix and match - should you want steel at the highest impact areas and aluminum in the less critical locations.
Starting at the front edge of the engine skid plate, we mount this plate to our front bumper (optional) and main frame rails using 6 mounting points. While this is totally overkill, it ensures impact forces are distributed evenly over your Nissan's frame and gives extra mounting options in case some of your factory mounting points are rusted or otherwise damaged. Moving to the front bottom edge of the engine skid, this is by far the area that sees the hardest and most frequent impacts on the trail. To account for this, we integrated 6 CNC-bends into this skid and mounted it against a large surface area of the vehicle’s frame. This makes this area of the skid plate nearly indestructible and will distribute those hard trail impacts over as large of a section of the vehicle’s frame as possible. At the rear edge of the engine skid plate, we use 2 more large thru-bolts and a nut plate to mount it to the front differential crossmember.
For the rear skid plates, we use large vertical ribs that span the length between each frame crossmember. These ribs fit tightly between the frame crossmembers, eliminating any weak points where the skid plate will bend under a hard impact. The fitment and size of these reinforcing ribs makes this skid plate extremely stiff with minimal weight gain over a simple flat skid plate. While the bolt heads on the bottom of this skid plate are exposed, all of these mounting points use long thru-bolts that thread into nuts placed on the topside of each frame crossmember. This means that any damaged bolt heads can still be easily removed via the nuts on top, which are very well protected and out of harms way. We prefer this solution over bolt protection rings welded to the bottom side of the skid plate like some other skid plate sets use. These protection rings increase the size of the low hang-up points and often end up getting smooshed against the bolt heads anyways in the event of hard trail impacts! These skid plates are offset to the driver side to reduce their footprint under the vehicle, minimizing additional weight and unnecessary ground clearance losses.
