Hi All,

As posted in the P38 thread already; I have been adding more and more gear to my P38 and are beginning to run into GVM issues. I currently have a TerraFirma front and rear bar with bash plates and they add quite a lot of weight to the car. Add to that the rocksliders and diff guards and I guess I'm up 200kg on that stuff alone. (including winch)

I am trying to track down a GVM upgrade kit or at least a way to upgrade it but I am also trying to reduce weight. The first thing that comes to mind is to reduce the weight of stuff that's already on the car. The winch I cannot make any lighter, it is already fitted with dyneema rope.

Since the barwork and bashplates are some of the heaviest pieces of gear on the car I am contemplating making them from aluminium. In my mind aluminium is a lot lighter but also a lot weaker. I van weld steel but I can't weld aluminium so I would have to source this out which makes it more expensive. Since off roading is not really a thing down here finding a firm specialized in this kind of work is near impossible, let alone that they will have the knowledge and experience as to how to build something like this for it to be sturdy enough.

The bashplates, imho, can easily be made from, say, 8mil aluminium and be just fine but still a LOT lighter. I am not sure about the bar work though. Since a trip around the world, and at the very least australia is on the bucketlist I need it to be at least sturdy enough for roo's and such. I would also prefer to have brush bars down the sides towards the rocksliders. Not sure if these can be made out of aluminium though.

I would really appreciate any thoughts and even experiences in this field!

Thanks,

-P