Video: Skid plates and Belly Splash Pans

IPD explains the benefits and purpose of belly pans and reasons to upgrade to IPD's aluminum skid plates including protecting your Volvo's oil pan from catastrophic damage.

Video transcript:

Let's talk about skid plates and belly pans. By that I mean this which is commonly called the belly pan. People call it a skid plate or we call a lot of times our upgraded aluminum ones we make skid plates as well. Now, these came on a lot of different Volvo models from the factory all the way back starting in the Volvo 240 series all the way up to the modern cars. Some of them came with different variants and slightly different styles but the purpose of them is pretty much all the same. They are there to go under the car protect the underbelly of the vehicle and keep debris and water and things like that from getting up into the engine bay as much as possible. Becomes more important on some of the rear-wheel drive cars that have all the belt drive system in the front so you don't get rocks debris things like that flying up into the v-belts. 

Now it is not uncommon they will break and need to be replaced. We stock both this style which is the original plastic style for a lot of models and we also stock upgraded aluminum ones for all of the other models. Now real quick while we have this one here, let's talk about some of the common failures and why these break. If you look around the perimeter here you'll see a couple holes like this and these are all the bolt holes and over time as the plastic brittles or if this takes some impact then those little pieces can break off. Sometimes these little flanges will break this will drag I'll be flapping around under the car. It's just a simple matter of unbolting the old one taking the pieces off, then reinstalling the new one and bolting it back together. Very easy and not a very expensive thing to buy either.

If you're looking for something a little more heavy-duty than your factory equipment plastic belly pan we offer heavy-duty aluminum ones in many cases. So one of the distinct advantages of it, of course, is that its aluminum. It'll last you a lot longer and it's going to resist a lot more; cheap piece of insurance. We have these all the way to starting back in the Volvo 240 series and a heavy-duty aluminum going all the way up to the brand newest model Volvo's. In some cases like this particular one off of a P80 car which is 850 and 70 series Volvo cars, these actually go on there to protect the oil pan where there is no factory splash pan. The original cars and those have an exposed oil pan that's very susceptible to damage, in some extreme cases we've even seen holes in oil pans develop. Which means quick evacuation of all your engine oil and short engine depth thereafter. 

So one of the other big advantages that we offer on these, that we designed is that we have holes for the factory service points. On a lot of the models like the p2 chassis cars if you want to change your oil you have to remove the factory plastic belly pan. While that's not hard, it's kind of a nuisance. So when we redesigned them and did our heavy-duty aluminum ones we made cutouts to get to the drain plug for them and also to get to the oil filter. On this one here you can see that we have a cutout right here for the oil filter. So that means when you're changing your oil all you have to do is just take your oil filter off drain plugs here and you don't even have to remove this plate. So it's a nice added piece of convenience along with being a piece of heavy-duty upgraded material to protect the underside of your car and keep your Volvo safe.

 If you have questions on applications and fitments give us a call.