ya i agree with b.miller123, i would like to have round tube headlight hoops but it just snowed a foot here so i need my truck back on the road and i didn't feel like buying a pipe bender.
Speaking of the financial aspect of this project, in total it probably cost me about $130. I think thats pretty good

 

chris,

your bumper didn't make me worry till i saw the front receiver. what's that for? i'm not sure about he sience behind it but i was told "do NOT tow in reverse gear, your front diff won't like it. some posted a thread about that with some scary pictures of the broken 3rd member gears and stuff, but i can't find it right now. and unlike other gears, the reverse gear itself is straight, prone to break. if you want to be towed, you got hooks already.

take a look at big rock's bumper design, it has two side sports, one for each side from the wing of the bumper to the frame. you can bolt them on to the existing holes where the factory bumper brackets were. it also helps when the impact was from the side.

 

custom

chris your bumper will look good painted black and all cleaned up. Just make sure you trim some of that stuff behind the bumper on the sides, and paint all the white stuff behind your front bumper.

 

The front reciever is for either manuviering a trailer driving forward (much easier) or for my small 2000lb winch.
I purposly positioned the reciever low on the bumper so there isn't much leverage twisting the mounting points. if you look at the picture you posted theres tons of leverage becasue of how high the reciever is positioned. Right now on mine all the force is pretty much just stright out from the frame, not a lot of twisting.
Does anyone understand what said hah?

 

So i primed, painted, mounted it. Only thing left is to make a skid plate remove some of the old bumper supports and wire the directionals.
i really like it, I am curios how my truck will ride with an extra 75 pounds in the front.
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My surprise for letting my truck sit for six days, a mouse nest
IMG_0283.jpg?t=1200536836

 

wow it looks really good. i wasnt sure i liked the square tubing but i do once its finished and painted.

 

thanks, ya i like the way it came out too. The hoops were the only parts i was unsure about using square tubing. Like i said no tube bender, so no round tubing.

I took it out for a drive finally, i can't really notice the extra weight. Maybe the front leans more into turns, but nothing big.

 

just go cross a small dip with faster speed(than you normally would go). by the way, you tool out the front factory bumper, mounts, and lower valance, that offsets a good 20-30 pounds. shouldn't be a problem.

maybe stronger shocks in the furture, i'd rate the difficulty level as same as rotating tires.

by the way, how does your bug deflector work? i ran into a cloud of bees yesterday on the freeway, well, in about half of a second, 20 dead bees on my windshield and hood, each left a spot of honey, what a paint in the butt to scrap them out. lucky me, i had my AC on and windows down, i heard some one(s) slammed on their breaks, ouch...

 

i don't have my bug deflector on anymore, haha broke it offroad. To be honest i can't really tell the difference with it off.

 

Finally got the skid plat done with a piece of 1/4" diamond plate. At first i wasn't crazy about the chrome diamond plate, but i think it actually looks pretty good.
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Looks good. Came together nice. If you don't like the silver you can always paint it. I would have to see a wider, daylight shot to deceide.

 

here are some wide daylight shots
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you should either chop off or paint the body stuff that ishanging lower on the sides, or you could put little "wings" that meet up with the tube you already have hanging out there, kinda like what the arb's have

 

ya i know i have to do something about that stuff hanging down. I don't want to cut anything but i also don't want to paint so i just left it. I'm interested in this wings but i don't know what you mean.
I'm going to wait till warmer weather to do anything cause i have to re paint the bumper.

 

kind of hard to see, but here you go:





you could put some more plate or something to cover up the holes, and it's another place that you could put turn signals or fog loghts

 

that would be the icing on the cake^

 

not bad! good custom work!

 

Easier to see in the daylight. Looks good. If you just shoot the white metal with some flat black paint you won't see it and you keep the clearance. The wings also look good but I would still paint it.

 

old post... but i love the bumper. I need to buy a welder and i'll be making my own custom front and rear bumper. i really like the square tubing. I'll probably make mine very similar to yours, and add the "wings". good work.

 

looks real good! only thing I would say is paint the front parts of your fenders and add something to protect the bottom part of the radiator. Maybe expanded steel?