Front and Rear (Lower) Control Arm Guards

[Land Rover Joe]

Tribe,

I am wondering if anyone has experience with such control arm guards?

Prospeed seems to be the one manufacture that makes this - you can see these at:

DISCOVERY 3 & 4 REAR ARM GUARDS

Aluminium guards to protect the rear a-arms of your Land Rover Discovery 3 or Discovery 4.

prospeed.co.uk

DISCOVERY 3 & 4 FRONT ARM GUARDS

Aluminium guards to protect the front a-arms of your Discovery 3 or Discovery 4.

prospeed.co.uk

Their website shows them as sold out but I don't really know if these are useful in any way. I cannot really imagine protecting the control arms and don't know of anyone who has bashed their arms up...but perhaps this is a problem (especially with rock crawling).

There have been a couple folks on this forum who mentioned them but nothing substantive.

Just looking for folks experience and preferences - many thanks!

 

[greiswig]

I’ve beaten my control arms up pretty badly. The seem fine.

 

[Al Pizzica]

In hundreds of hours off roading I have never seen a failure related to not having a control arm guards, like @greiswig said, they aren't something that can't take a few hits. Plus, anything that would damage them would not be stopped from doing so by these.

 

[mm3846]

Never in my life have I thought to cover 1/4” or 3/16” thick steel with 1/8” of aluminum lol

 

[MellonRover]

Overlanding jewlery

 

[Rover Range]

Just a big mud catcher.

 

[scapistron]

Just a big salt catcher.

As a New Englander I felt compelled to fix that for you.

 

[powershift]

I would like to hear the Land Rover in the product pics. In pic #3 notice it doesn't have the rear muffler back there.

 

[Land Rover Joe]

Thanks Tribe!

Agreed - I cannot imagine what these items would do (other than look tough, I guess).

And as much as I care about appearances, and want to be as well as look as tough as possible...I cannot really see a situation which would be helped by those guards. I have my entire underside covered in plates until the spare wheel well so I am all about tough and "bash plates" / protection (perception and reality).

But even these are just a bit too ridiculous for me (as has been well stated by the gang already - pretty much my thoughts) so not even I could justify getting a set (to serve no conceivable purpose).

Thus, this LR4 "candy" would seem more like weird costume jewelry than off-roading, dare-I-say "over-landing", bling bling.

All that said, my rear control arms took quite a beating and are not really re-usable at all (more from corrosion than anything else). I was a bit surprised how beat-up they actually were when we pulled them off - but living on the bottom side of these trucks for 15 years was certainly not easy. Not anything such over-landing bling would have helped, however.

Interesting none-the-less!