Outer Limits 4x4 Board

I am chopping the back off my LWB zook and putting a tray on. I'll be shortening the chassis too, but only up to the rear crossmember so nothing will be really changed structurally.

I cant decide whether i should make the tray wide enough to cover the tyres OR make the tray nice and narrow and put some flares on to cover the tyres. If i keep it narrow it will be the same width as the rest of the body, if i widen it to cover the tyres it will add about 3" on each side.

Whaddya reckon???

i would build it body width and just add some flares to cover the wheels if you have to.
It wont get caught up on trees and shit then

This was my only real concern.

I thought if I angled the leading edge of the tray back at 45 degrees or so that wouldnt be such a problem. And i'd be able to avoid ripping flares off but not having them at all.

I would angle the tray out to cover the tyres. If you run flares you will only rub the try till the flare and then get stuck against the tyre. At least if the tyre is covered by the tray you have more of a chance of it pushing the tyre around what you are up against.

Good point.

I was also thinking of angling the two rear corners like on your dual cab Ruff. Maybe it'll end up looking like a big octagon!

Hey, it's only a zook so maybe i'll just pinch a stop sign and bolt that down. Pre-fabbed, and alloy to boot!

Seriously, I had a look at the shortened tray thread and got a few ideas from there too. I'll be making mine out of steel at this stage, that'll help out evening up the weight distribution front/rear.

Ideally I'd go for a narrower tray & removable flares. Keeps you road legal, but means you got the rubber out wide when offroad....

If removable flares is too much hassle, then I'd go full width tray but angled so it's less likely to get caught up....

i'd start at the body width then angle out to tyre width then angle back in after the tyres so that when you rub up against a tree the tray will push your tyres away from the tree. also saves carting home a tray full of mud/dirt/sand/cowshit

I think that you'll find that this one is a matter of personal opinion. I'm probably building a tray over next weekend and into the following week and I still don't know what I'll do. I've bought the steel already but I'm still unsure. The steel that I have is for a narrow tray with the idea of removable plastic truck guards. If I change my mind, I'll have to go back and buy more steel. There is an agrument for each.

The clearance benifits of the narrow tray are obvious but then there was an situation on the second stage of XRCC where cheezy had his rear tyres sticking out from his body. He had the body up hard against a tree which meant that his tyre was wanting to run straight into the tree as opposed to around it. With a wider body (or tray) that is the same width as the tyres, the rear of his truck would have been pushed around the tree. As it turned out, cheezy just knocked the tree over and problem solved!

So as I said - probably one that you'll have to decide for yourself. If you're like me, you'll probably regret the decision.

After writing this post, I'm thinking that I might go the wider option.

I am going to make it wide enough to cover the tyres.

If worse comes to worse and I hate it I will just make another tray. No big deal.

What about materials? I was going to used 40mm box section as a frame and pop rivet a sheet of 3mm alloy checkerplate to the top of that.

Any other ideas????

Have you thought about making a tube frame on the rear and incorporating maybe a rollcage or similar, but than make a removable tray.

So when your driving around the streets and stuff it looks just like a tray back, but when you get out to the serious stuff just unclip the tray and it leaves you with a light weight tubed rear end so you can smack into stuff without a worry

Yeah, i have thought about that but i run a fibreglass ute top from a Maruti. I can't think of how I would be able to make it work and keep the ute top at the same time.

The ute top fits over the standard roll hoop, as shown below. It can be removed in a few minutes as it just bolts on.

I also still have the full length canopy. I was thinking about making another tray that would be longer so that I can put the canopy on for camping & sh1t like that. Pic of the full canopy also below.