[MENTION=118730]AssBurns[/MENTION], I choose to do the extra bend because it gets to the higher clearance much sooner. I found with the type of wheeling I do where Im coming off of ledges and staircase type obstacles fairly often that I would hit the crossmember that the skid plate fastens to behind the tranny pretty often. Which basically was kinda showing that if I had of done one smooth piece, yes it will slide along better, but theres also a lot of wasted space IMO where I would be dragging it on things unnecessarily when you could just be driving over it. Ive found that because of the wheel base of the 4runner when we drop off of things like that it tends to hit the most in the area around the trans, so I wanted as much clearance as possible. Doing the single smooth piece also increases your span of unsupported area so you'll need more bracing to stand up to the extra abuse it will take when it is hanging lower.
Another thing I did different was narrowing the tranny skid. I did this partially because of the amount of material I had, weight savings, and because I felt being wider it wouldn't gain much more protection and I wanted easy access to the front driveshaft for greasing.
Sorry for the long winded response, just sharing the thought process I went through when designing it.
