Show off your DIY armor!

I like how yours turned out better than mine. I just took an old cj7 bumper and re-fab the brackets to work on my frame and played it in.

 

Hey yours turned out great! My favorite thing about my runner is the salvaged title. After Me and my lady built the bumper it took all of about 5 seconds to decide to just burn it to the frame. It's kinda the guinea pig for future possible Tacoma mods anyway. If I don't like something on my $2000 4runner I don't think I'll care for it on my 30k Tacoma

 

Workin on a front plate bumper

 

Finished

 

that look sick!!!

 

*starts slow clap, nods head.

Looks really good.

 

Ohhh shit that's coming out nice man. Good work

 

@Cid Where's yours? the mock up looked

 

Lol thanks. I got the bike last week and progress has stalled out. Seeing yours is making me wanna get back on that.

 

ahhhhh, I see the bike! nice one.

Question for you. How are you bolting the bumper to the truck? I've looked a lot of pics of all the top vendors, and they all seem to use factory bolt locations. I made my mount hit all ten factory mounts, but the 4 bolts (2 on either side) seem small to me...I kind of just assumed that if all the big boys were mounting with the stock locations, that mine would be fine. Are you using anything else to mount it?

 

That's exactly what I did. I used the stock mount locations. 2 on the front and bent 90* around the sides to hit those 2 on each end. I figure that should be good enough. But I know what you're saying the side bolts are kinda small. Should be fine. I was curious how the aftermarket bumpers mounted as well on 1st gens but all I could find was trail gear mount pics and looks like they dont even use the front 2 bolts at all with their frame mount. Unless i was seeing it wrong

Edit- I was seeing it wrong they mount underneath as well. Might give more stability for skid mounting and winching

 

The four bolts on the bottom of the frame seem like the largest of all and have the factory tow hook. I made use of those just to be sure.

I also read about always matching bolt and nut grades. Like 8.8 bolts with 8.8 nuts. I don't know what is on the frame, but I'm, again, just going off what the vendors do and am assuming the welded nuts are going to be fine. Just want to be safe

 

Yea man good call. I'm going to have to box in the bottom of my mount and get to those bolts as well.

 

My buddy and I started building bumpers in our home shop in March. While this all started as DIY, it's rapidly started to grow into an actual business. Here's our second version that we build back in may:

 

I made all these 1/4” skids for my 4runner, the rear two will now be going on the Tacoma.


Rear two


And with the front

 

How did you bend it?

 

I’m guna throw a guess out there and say whiskey bend method

 

They look like legit bends to me! Smooooth

 

Started on my runners rear bumper today, yes it's schedule 40 and yes it's galvy but precautions are being taken including respirators. some people might look down on pipe as lesser quality, and I'm by no means an "expert" but I've used dom tubing to build bumpers and sliders in the past and by the end of a hard winter of wheeling im cutting out and replacing sections or build new junk, schedule 40 on the other hand imo seems take a better beating. I'm thinking about building sliders next but who knows.

 

Pipe is more brittle yet harder hence why you don't see any denting pr deformation. It's a different alloy which gives it different qualities, has much more iron in it. When you bend it if you look at DOM vs pipe under a microscope you'll see microcracking all in the pipe. You should see a rollcage come apart from using pipe it's not pretty and it doesn't happen at the welded joints it happens at the bends. Also when you buy lets say 2" then that is referring to the inside dimension vs tubing which is referring to the outside. Also you have to go look at a chart and see what the wall thicknesses are because they vary based on the Schedule then your outside diameter changes and if you need to meet certain criteria for space constraints that's no good. You can order 2" tubing in pretty much whatever wall thickness you want and it'll be that 2" OD.