Ts7xTaco
2️⃣ Bronze
I've been waiting for a minimalist, lightweight, high clearance, tube bumper to come to market since I bought the truck in 2016, and this is it! This is a pre-production unit I agreed to try out and give feedback and suggestions in order to make the final production unit the best it could be.
First of all, I have to say the customer service was great. I received updates to the build status and hoops they were jumping through to get the bumper to the point in quality and design they where trying to achieve. Once the bumper was built there were issues with the courier service they were trying to use and decided to just deliver it themselves( a 5 hour drive, one way).
What I received was an extremely well packaged bumper. The tubes were all protected by roll cage padding or pipe insulation of some sort, wrapped in bubble wrap, and covered in cardboard before being thoroughly wrapped in plastic wrap. In the plastic wrap was a couple WarFab stickers, hardware, invoice, and as I imagined might happen (because it was a pre-production unit) no instructions.
I immediately jumped into tearing into the install. I pulled the fender flares and looked at as many pictures I could find regarding where the cut needed to be and made the cut, I was off by about 1/2 inch on the fender side and now it looks like the tubes are angled down, I'm not totally in love with that. You'll see i cut from the top of the fog light bezel across to the fender/bumper seam. In retrospect I would have gone down about a half inch (maybe even more) on the fender side.
After making the cuts and removing what was left of the bumper I noticed the factory power steering cooler was going to be in the way of the bumper mounting flush. I ended up making three brackets out of 1/8 x 1 1/4 strap that moved the cooler out of the way. I didn't get pictures but super simple to make.
After making room for the bumper to mount flush I test fit before taking it off and mounting my winch to it. I ended up cutting away a bit of the grill support to make room for the winch. I mounted a Smittybilt 9.5k with synthetic line to the bumper and mounted the bumper/winch to the truck. The winch will not mount to the bumper with the bumper mounted to the truck, I tried.
I still haven't mounted the front plate to the bumper and I'm not sure when I do I'll keep it on. I really like the open look, we'll see if I like it with the front plate. I haven't had a chance to get off the pavement yet but the clearance gained is obvious against the factory bumper, and I love the way it looks.
First of all, I have to say the customer service was great. I received updates to the build status and hoops they were jumping through to get the bumper to the point in quality and design they where trying to achieve. Once the bumper was built there were issues with the courier service they were trying to use and decided to just deliver it themselves( a 5 hour drive, one way).
What I received was an extremely well packaged bumper. The tubes were all protected by roll cage padding or pipe insulation of some sort, wrapped in bubble wrap, and covered in cardboard before being thoroughly wrapped in plastic wrap. In the plastic wrap was a couple WarFab stickers, hardware, invoice, and as I imagined might happen (because it was a pre-production unit) no instructions.
I immediately jumped into tearing into the install. I pulled the fender flares and looked at as many pictures I could find regarding where the cut needed to be and made the cut, I was off by about 1/2 inch on the fender side and now it looks like the tubes are angled down, I'm not totally in love with that. You'll see i cut from the top of the fog light bezel across to the fender/bumper seam. In retrospect I would have gone down about a half inch (maybe even more) on the fender side.
After making the cuts and removing what was left of the bumper I noticed the factory power steering cooler was going to be in the way of the bumper mounting flush. I ended up making three brackets out of 1/8 x 1 1/4 strap that moved the cooler out of the way. I didn't get pictures but super simple to make.
After making room for the bumper to mount flush I test fit before taking it off and mounting my winch to it. I ended up cutting away a bit of the grill support to make room for the winch. I mounted a Smittybilt 9.5k with synthetic line to the bumper and mounted the bumper/winch to the truck. The winch will not mount to the bumper with the bumper mounted to the truck, I tried.
I still haven't mounted the front plate to the bumper and I'm not sure when I do I'll keep it on. I really like the open look, we'll see if I like it with the front plate. I haven't had a chance to get off the pavement yet but the clearance gained is obvious against the factory bumper, and I love the way it looks.
