cracked chassis

It's not going to help you but the chassis cracking potential of the Prado was the reason I went with the OEM alloy bar on my 120, if the chassis cracks at least Toyota can't argue a non OEM item casued the cracking.

Now I just have to battle them at some stage in future about my inner gaurd cracking.

Oh what a feeling!!!!!!!

When you refer to the "winch bar" what exactly is this item?

The 150 series (and 120 series before them) have a problem with the inner guards cracking but I've not heard of a chassis cracking problem. Exactly where is the chassis cracked?

I ended up taking the winch off my Prado because in 7 years of touring I've never used it. It was 40kg that I didn't need hanging off the front of the vehicle.

Toyota do have a repair "patch" for the inner guard cracking problem which I'm sure you'll be aware of if you've been looking through Pradopoint.

Susan,

We’ll need some details on just what the “chassis crack” involves. Ie; what’s cracked and where.

A loose bullbar on the Canning cracked the chassis on my Navara twice! By chassis cracking, a section in the rams horn ends of the chassis held a captive nut. This nut was welded to the inside of the chassis rails prior to it being folded and formed.The nut was responsible for holding the bull bar. On the canning, the thread was crushed so the bull bar began to loosen and vibrate. this caused a piece of metal about the size of a 50c piece around the nut to break out.

This happened twice and was due largely to the lack of support for the alloy bull bar. This was rectified by extra support arms being fitted from the bull bar to mounts lower on the chassis front end.

It may be that your chassis has this sort of issue rather than a straight or more traditional type ‘crack’(a straight crack is a lot easier to fix believe me).

I’ll dig out and post a photo tonight. Meanwhile can you find out what your mechanic means by 'crack'. We need to know just what has happened and where.

Cheers Mick

There's an Ironman bullbar on my Isuzu. It flexes quite a lot on the rough stuff. I assume this is because of a design for airbag compatibility and also assume that sooner or later something is going to break due to metal fatigue.

I unfortunately have an Ironman bullbar on our 2004 120 Prado. The tube bracket that can mount a winch cracked through on the CSR last year. It was welded on the Route and latter tied on to get home to Brisbane. We was unsuccessful in being able to purchase a replacement from Ironman as my bar was made is Australia and are now made overseas. My chassis also had cracks where the plate is welded on the front of the chassis that mounts part of the bull bar. We also had inner guard cracks on the left side.