Features:

• No chassis drilling or welding required
• 3mm wall box section steel
• Fully sealed construction, with no holes or entry points to the inside of the tubes. Prevents rusting from the inside.
• Also available to fit 2″ and 3″ body lifts

Priced: £280+vat

Front skid/diff guard showing reinforcement ribs

The diff guard and skid prototypes are complete and fitted. We’ve gone well ahead of our competitors.

The most important design aim was to protect the control arm brackets. The front brackets are fragile. The rear bracket is much stronger, but is a main “point of impact” under the vehicle and therefore also prone to bending. As well as bending, the rear bracket is often distorted due to impacts. Bending these brackets results in the front wheels being out of alignment, which then affects the vehicles handling, and means that the wheels are more likely to rub on the car body and arches.

The front brackets are protected by the diff guard’s front “skid” section. This is the section at the front which tucks up under the bumper. It helps the vehicle slide over obstacles rather than making an impact that would be absorbed by the control arm brackets. Additionally, the diff guard must be used in conjunction with our truss. The truss braces the two front brackets, helping distribute force between them.

• Made from 5mm steel, which gives the ideal balance of strength and weight
• Three individual braces stiffen the mid section of the diff guard which is  most prone to damage
• The guard is designed to tight tolerences to ensure absolute minimum loss of ground clearance
• The guard includes a front section which tucks under our winch bumper and helps the vehicle slide over obstacles

Rear skid is made from single piece 5mm steel sheet, and is the only skid on the market that fully covers the catolytic converter, and mid chassis cross member. The skid is highly important because it protects the transfer case bracket – a weak and poorly designed bracket, which unless protected, quickly bends under minimal off-road use.

Prices

Front skid/diff guard – 350GBP +vat
Rear skid – 180GBP +vat

Rear skid covers chassis members, transfer case and bracket, and gearbox

Fitting bracket for rear skid uses existing mounting holes.

Mangled transfer case bracket showing damage caused when not using an adequate rear skid.

Front suspension arm truss

As well as stiffening the front suspension and helping to protect the control arm brackets from common damage, the truss is used to mount the upcoming undercarriage protection. It includes two threaded holes to receive the upcoming bash plate.

Features:

• 6mm front wall section for full rigidity
• 3mm rear and bottom section
• reinforced bolt holes to ensure rigidity
• angled bolt holes to receive bash plate
• 12.9 grade mounting bolts
• bolt in – no welding required – uses existing control arm holes
• accurately designed to maximise ground clearance

Priced 120GBP +vat

Front winch bumper

The Hallam Front Winch Bumper for the Suzuki Vitara is now available for sale. Like the rear bumper, the front bumper has been carefully design in CAD to withstand a pulling force of 4 metric tons. It is made from 50mm box section steel with 4mm wall sections in the critical areas, and 3mm elsewhere.

A lot of design has gone into correctly mounting the bumper to the vehicle. This has been made particularly difficult because the front of the Vitara chassis dips downwards below the level of the bumper, and therefore makes it difficult to transfer forces from the bumper to the chassis. The usual solution is to mount the bumper to the turrets that hold the front of the body to the chassis. This is where the standard Vitara bumper mounts. However the turrets are made of thin steel and not ideally suited to  mounting a winch bumper. Our solution has been to use thick 5mm steel brackets that cup the turrets and the chassis simultaneously, transferring as much of the force as possible to the chassis. The design also reduces the force transferred to the turrets using a lever mechanism, where the turrets support the bumper further away from the bracket thereby reducing the force by 50%.

Easy removal of the bumper was also a high design criteria. The bumper is not permanently welded to the vehicle. In fact there is very minimal welding required. The brackets mount onto existing bolt holes, and through the front chassis cross member. Two nuts are welded into the front turrets. The bumper then attaches to the brackets and welded turret nuts. The bumper can be removed in less than 5 minutes making servicing and access easy.

The bumper has the following features:

• Designed to withstand upto 4 tons of pull – enough to recover a deeply stuck vehicle!
• Square hitch caddy to accept a variety of devices
• Mounts using two brackets which cover the turrets
• Simple box section design for easy repair and to reduce cost
• Two shackle holes to accept green rated shackles and a bridle
• 4mm wall top section designed to allow the vehicle to be jacked directly at the bumper using a high lift type jack
• Fully sealed construction, with no holes or entry points to the inside of the tubes. Prevents rusting from the inside.
• Also available to fit 2″ and 3″ body lifts

Priced: £550+vat

Front bumper brackets "cup" the turrets to distribute force

The winch bumper mounts directly to the chassis using the existing bolt holes plus an additional two M12 bolts which attached to nuts that need to be welded to the rear of the chassis. This combination provides a very strong attachment setup.

Some welding and modification is required to mount the bumper. Once the modification has been done then the bumper can be quickly removed using 6 M12 bolts. Removal takes approx 5 minutes which allows easy access and servicing.

The bumper and attachment is strong enough to be used for recovery, towing, and mounting specialist carriers such as “direct to vehicle” motorcycle carriers. The strong bumper and direct to chassis design makes the Vitara especially suited to a range of heavy duty tasks.

The bumper has the following features:

• Direct to chassis mounting so that forces are transferred to the vehicle chassis
• Designed to withstand upto 4 tons of pull – enough to recover a deeply stuck vehicle!
• Square hitch caddy to accept a variety of devices
• Simple box section design for easy repair and to reduce cost
• Two shackle holes to accept green rated shackles and a bridle
• 4mm wall top section designed to allow the vehicle to be jacked directly at the bumper using a high lift type jack
• Fully sealed construction, with no holes or entry points to the inside of the tubes. Prevents rusting from the inside.
• Also available to fit 2″ and 3″ body lifts

Priced: £350+vat

Our second round of testing resulted in serious damage to our test vehicle and delayed development of the undercarriage armour by at least two months. We’re almost done recovering from the damage, and have started development of the undercarriage armour. We expect everything to be ready for testing in late May 2011.

Our products are carefully designed on CAD to withstandard the rigours of off road use. We use aerospace quality fittings and take no shortcuts. Our products are rigourously tested in real off road environments as well as computer tested analysis.

Hallam is wholy owned by Ad Finem Ltd, and are currently developing our first range of products – a full Basic Armour Kit for the Suzuki Vitara including Front and Rear Winch Bumpers, Rock Rails, and full Undercarriage Armour.

Our products are currently in development stages. We hope to launch the Basic Armour Kit in September 2011 after the products have been fully tested. Products will be available on a made-to-order basis.