[lonepine]

I'm on a 2 lane highway in the mountains. a few times a week. I'm looking for a front guard that would help protect a bit should I finally get up close and personal with a deer or some other animal. Any suggestions for a 2012 RAV4?

 

[Blogson]

Since the RAV is built unibody style there isn't much structure to support a guard, unlike for example pickup trucks which have a strong frame structure. I had already crawled under the front of my RAV and viewed its limitations for a guard and when I suggested having a bar at my servicing dealer and they had lifted the RAV for service the manager showed me the situation again and recommended that I not have a bar. He said that if I had a guard and hit one of the deer we have here at normal highway speed having a bar might actually increase the damage.


I thought about having our local do-everything-regarding-metal person install reinforcing, but decided to scrap the entire idea.

 

[pico]

Jim, agreed concerning the traditional mounting points. I'm wondering if a bar
attached to the tow loop locations might work out. Any idea?

 

[lonepine]

Thanks -- I hadn't gotten as far as looking for a mount and I'd rather not make things worse. There are some guards available that attach to the tow hook. The one I saw didn't cover the headlights, which is what I was hoping for, but given the mounting only at the bottom, it makes sense that it might tip into the engine compartment rather than helping.

 

[Civiltechyyc]

I have a GoRhino Ram Bar on the front of my 2012 Rav4

I also painted the bottom grille black as I wasn't a fan of the chrome finish that the original product had. It was fairly easy to mount once you make sense of how it's assembled. Took maybe an hour and a bit. You have to cut the belly pan to make it fit and it would have been easy had I a dremel tool with me.

Now all that said, it's not going to do [email protected]#$ all against a deer. It had saved me so far from the concrete walls at the mall parking lot once or twice when pulling in too close.

More recently the LED light bar has been a better benefit on the Ram Bar

 

[rav4system]

perhaps you could get a guard be it the full or the half style bull bar and then fab up an additional cross bar using the tow eyelet mounting holes...get a rod with the correct thread type and then weld a 1x1 or 2x2 bar over that...make 2 of those and thread them into the eyelet holes...then run another bar across the front to tie those two together...that cross bar could also tie in with the bull bar or grille guard so that in the event of an animal hit the eyelet cross bar could act to reinforce the bull bar/grille guard...