Eight bolts and out. Six bolts, actually, and two screws. Some mods are easy, while some take an hour, if you’re dawdling and taking lots of pictures. Removing the rocker panel covers from the little Rav-That-Could was all that. Even some worthwhile mods are easy.

Compare this – rocker panel cover, shiny and obtrusive.

Bad Place for a Bulge

If you take the time to look at the Toyota Rav4, it’s not hard to notice the rocker panel covers and how they protrude, sticking out of the body over the OEM rocker panels, adding close to six inches girth beneath the door-line. They aren’t ugly – in fact, they give the otherwise metro trucklet some definition and a little bulk. They are in the way, though, if you’re going to try and drive this thing off-road and enable the trucklet’s otherwise wispy dimensions. Every inch counts, so we trimmed a few.

We considered that leaving the rocker panel covers on would give us a rock-check and audible rock sensor, as they were a throwaway part on a throwaway vehicle. A harder look at the part changed our minds. Three relatively stout brackets secured the extruded aluminum covers to the body, plus a significant screw through several layers of plastic cladding in the forward wheel well. That means any noteworthy rock-to-cover contact would likely place the vehicle in the lurch – the cover could hold enough of the Rav4’s weight to interfere with proper tire-to-ground contact, ceasing forward progress. If the vehicle could still move, the brackets could shift and damage the undercarriage, or the big screw in the well could out itself and bring some less pointless fender parts with it. Yank ‘em.

Introducing the cover-to-body brackets.

Totally Off-Topic Fun Rav4 Moment

Afterwards, we went out in the silly season traffic, watching the last-minute panic-purchasing, and a woman on the phone with too many Nordstrom bags marched right in front of us. She couldn’t have been any more the stereotypical idiot if she’d tried. So certain cars would stop for her that SHE DIDN’T EVEN LOOK, (pull that on the East Coast and you’re dead meat, lady), we were left with little recourse but to swerve and give her a blast of the Rav4’s killer-weird squawk horn. We’d wired up an off-note Hella horn a few months ago. It’s the same Hella you can pick up in the Griot’s Garage catalog (website by the same name): bloody loud, sold in a two-toned set. If you intentionally mismatch the Hellas with your OEM horns, you get an out-of-tune angry donkey bray, which we did. This woman’s reaction would have been a YouTube champ had we filmed it – she tried to jump right out of her skin. Must have leapt ten feet, scarves and socks flying everywhere. Spectacular.

Once the brackets were out, the bolts went back in.

Rocker Cover Removal for Dummies

The three-year-old whom we haul around in the Rav4-Crawler could probably have removed the rocker panel covers. It was such an obvious process, there were only two moments we needed to use the gray matter. One, with all the bracket-to-body bolts removed, the covers still did not budge. We found the other set of bolts in each bracket allowed adjustment, essentially enabling the cover to be cinched down to the rocker panel itself. We loosened those bolts. The second moment of mental prowess involved interpreting the interface of cover to body, and with a diagonal/downward/outward tug the cover almost literally popped off. Working on Toyotas is satisfying that way.

With the few bolts necessary removed and the rocker panel covers off, we lubed up the bolts with penetrating oil and sent them back home up and inboard of the body seam at the base of the rocker panels. Typically, we’d remove bolts from someplace less filthy than the underbody and store them in the leftover Rav4 parts box (appropriately labeled in a nice Ziploc clone all their own), but we prefer holes in the undercarriage full of bolt instead of dirt or other road-borne funk.

You figure stuff out while poking around beneath your rig, and we put a few tidbits to mind while down there today. One of the notables was the limited clearance of the Dunlop Rover RVXTs from tread to wheel well – a little creative massage of the inner well or strategic removal of one or more sections of the plastic well liner could probably deter the occasional (and essentially harmless) tire-to-well grumble. Also, the relatively exposed nature of our fuel tank once again stirred the creeps. Perhaps it’s time to invest in a nice carbon dioxide extinguisher.

Conclude Yourself More Trail-Worthy

True gems like this little project remind us all why turning wrenches is fun. Throwaway trucklet, throwaway parts, no stress, combined with what we can make work, what we can achieve for a minimum investment of money, how we can profit with application of the gearhead’s cerebral process and some time. Our Gen-One Toyota Rav4, indefatigable trucklet once and again the trail toy, plus the minus of an audience-inspired cosmetic device, further trail-enabled with the wave of a wrench. Parts were in the way of the Rav4-Crawling mission, and we removed them.

Before the rocker panel covers were removed…

And after. Please note difference in clearance.