There are a lot of reasons why you may want to bulletproof your car. Maybe you are going to a dangerous trip, and you want to gear up your vehicle appropriately. Maybe you live in a dangerous area where the crime rate is very high, and there are regular cases of stolen vehicles, robbery, and even murder. Or maybe you just want a piece of mind where your car is considered to protect you and your family.
Whatever of the reasons may be, there’s no denying there’s currently a boom in the business of armoring up your vehicles. From people like you who are considered for their safety and vehicles to CEOs, politicians, and others who are constantly in danger, people are interested more in their safety, and bulletproofing your car is one of the ways to ensure that.
Hence, today, we’ll learn how to bulletproof your car.
Commercial Vs DIY:
While you could essentially buy a car like Bulletproof Bentley Continental that comes armored up from the manufacturer, it will legit cost a fortune compared to its non-geared-up counterparts. Even the cheapest commercially available models are substantially more expensive than a normal non-bulletproofed car.
Materials:
When looking for materials to bulletproof your car, only a few are up to the task that can actually be thin enough to fit inside a vehicle and stop the desired threats. Recommended options are Armormax, fabric consisting of ballistic nylon, steel, polymer, and armored glass.
The ballistic glass is definitely not your typical dinnerware but rather a specialized bulletproof to withstand greater compression, pressure when bullets would hit the car. The windows of the car are the most vulnerable part if you are ever to be attacked. So the usual formation to get any protection against that is an outer layer of bulletproof glass with an inner layer of polymer plastic.
How to Bulletproof Your Car
With the actual process, different parts of the car have different requirements. You cannot armor the tire the same way as the window of the vehicle for obvious reasons. Here is a part by part guide to armoring or bulletproofing your car:
Door
This is probably one of the most accessible parts of the car. Since the vehicle becomes substantially heavy after being armored, you would need a heavy hinge for support. A steel hinge with at least 3 clasps is good enough of a start.
Body
The body of the vehicle can be encased with a ballistic standard steel-plated cover. The inside of the ceiling and the floors can also be encased with ballistic fabrics. The front could be extended to increase the shock bumper. They are effective shock absorbers, which can help to absorb energy during an accident or combat. However, these additions can be as inconspicuous as possible to let the attacker be unaware of the extra protection.
Tires
One of the most vulnerable parts of the vehicle, you may have watched in movies if not in real-life situations that people tend to shoot first at your tire to slow down and inevitably engage in combat later. According to the website Torquewrenchcenter.com when bulletproofing your car, your priority for the tires should be a modification in such a way that even after they are being shot, they are able to roll enough times to get away from the scene (see Armormax’s runflat options).
Bigger and more armored cars can use an onboard tire pressure control and sealing system while the smaller cars can rely on a composite flat run tire as the regular ones cannot handle gunshots.
Windows
As previously mentioned, bulletproofing or armoring the windows, which encompass a large fraction of your vehicle, is an important step when bulletproofing your car. Just a thicker version of safety glass is not enough when you want a fully armored car.
Usually, these can break under the specific compression from bullets coming at high speed. They are not even made to withstand against most of the high-profile car robberies. To bulletproof your windows, you must sandwich them with polycarbonate polymer on the inside and leaded glass on the outside. The thinner leader glass has a diameter of 0.8 inches, which is capable of stopping a bullet firing from a very popular 9mm handgun.
However, if you are not satisfied with that, you can also choose the thickest bulletproof shielding, which is about 2 inches thick. These can even stop a shot from a high-powered 0.30-06 rifle, which is one of the top graded combat weapons.
Drivetrain and Chassis
There is no point in armoring your vehicle if, at the end of the day, it cannot run. When you armor or bulletproof a vehicle, you add in a lot of extra weight to the vehicle. Even the lightest armoring can add up to a substantial 300 pounds on the vehicle as extra weight.
If you go all out, you can expect a minimum of 1,000 plus pounds of additional weight to the vehicle. With all these extra weights, the drivability of your vehicle may decrease if you don’t modify the chassis and the drivetrain according to the law of proportionality. Typically, you can modify them by raising the spring rates and damping as well as adding the air slots. That could essentially increase the drivability of the car.
Engine
While most of the present-age sedans have enough horsepower to pull through additional weight from the armor, it still is necessary to check if your vehicle’s engine can actually cope with it.
However, keep in mind that the more of your horsepower the vehicle has, it also consumes more gas. So if you live in a resource-scarce area, and you can see your car can handle the added load, it is recommended that you don’t modify the engines any further. Most of the SUVs and their engines can hold additional weight in the car. But if you don’t have any qualms about the usage of gas, we would recommend you to go the extra step and increase the horsepower to ensure the longevity of your vehicle.
Final Words
Bulletproofing your car is hard, and most of the time, you probably would not be able to install a lot of parts on your own unless you are a professional (contact us to learn more). So if you are sure about armoring your vehicle, it would be a good idea to invest in a professional service. We hope that his list gave you a guide on where to start with this tedious yet worthwhile project.
