Rear Tire Gate install on 05+ Tacoma (CBI)

Well everyone says all good things take time, and this bumper was no exception, but it finally arrive in the mail…my FULLY LOADED CBI Rear bumper. This puppy includes the following:

- High clearance bumper (Bushmaster 2.0)
- Tire Gate
- Hi-Lift Mount
- 2 Jerry Can Holder
- CB Antenna Mount
- Fold Down Table (Perfect for my camp stove)
- Backup Lights
- Hitch

So, although CBI does have a wait, trust me, their workmanship is WELLLLL worth the wait!

The jerry can holder and fog lights should be arriving end of the week, so for now, this write-up does not include them, but I will revise it once I get them and install them…so onto the write-up and pics!

First step was to paint it. Obviously, this is meant to be used (I cannot afford things like this just for looks) so I chose rust-oleum so that I could touch it up easily. I originally planned to do Rust-oleum Hammered, however, after the first coat, I realized that it was more silver/grey than black and did not like it. So I topped it off with a coat of plain old semi-gloss rust-oleum. All in all I think it turned out well. (Take your time doing this, as there is a LOT of metal to cover!)
One thing I want to make clear, do not paint the spindle or the bushing on the gate, this will make it impossible to install later (trust me, I made the mistake of painting the spinal, luckily my gf had a great idea and used acetone to take the paint right off).

Once I had the painting done, the fun began. CUTTING TIME!....I guess my snorkel broke the ice, because it was much easier for me to cut into my truck this time around (no more tears..haha).

Because this is a “cut to fit” type thing, there is no template or standard way to do this, as each one will fit each truck differently. I chose to make cardboard templates to get an idea of where the cut should be, then made it nice and strait using the body lines as reference:





Here it is all cut up. Note that you do not need to cut the crap directly below the tail light (it is much thicker as well):



I have not had time to clean the cut up yet, but I plan to clean it up, use touch up paint to keep it from rusting, then using that door jamb plastic liner crap to make it a nice clean line.

Next it is time to mock it up and see if my templates worked. This part was difficult because I had to figure out a way to lift the bumper in place, with only the help of my gf (the bumper weights more than her!). I finally figured out a good plan of attack. I used ratcheting tie straps anchored inside my bed to ratchet it up into place. It actually worked very well:



Once again, CBI great craftsmanship showed, as all the bolt holes line up perfectly, and the grade 8.8 bolts they supplied worked perfect. I may upgrade to 10.9 someday, but this thing is very solid as is.

My templates actually worked great and there was no need to trim anymore, so I was able to bold her up for good.

Here you can see the bumper itself.



The tire gate slides right into place (assuming you did not paint the spindle or bushings) and here is the final product!





Swing down Table:



And here she is all loaded up. As I said, the fog lights and can holder is not on yet. I will update this with those once they come in.

 

Damn that is one bad ass bumper. Truck is one of my favorites.

 

Looks awesome!

 

Well made bumper for sure, they did a nice job. Personally, I dont care for that 1/2 cut bedside look though. I like when it's all the way up to the lights like Kevin does with his high clearance bumpers.

 

That's one sweet looking ass .

 

does the spare tire block a lot of the rear view

 

That looks great... though I still wouldn't really want to cut into body like that... At least not yet

 

thats looks bad ass!

 

Nice Robert! Great idea with the cardboard template and the ratchet straps! The double can carrier and lights are on the way. Dropped them off at FedEx yesterday.

 

This bumper looks amazing but i would never cut into my truck like that.
It has treated me so well why would I want to injure it?

 

Man how much does that thing weigh/Cost?

 

One of the keys to cutting this location is that you are right underneith a rivet that holds the flare on. If it was cut any higher, you would cut that rivet off as well. I am not sure how Kevin does his, so there is probbaly another way to do it, but that is just something I noticed on this install.

 

Just the pasengers side of it..haha, but really, you can see the drivers side and through the rim of your spare.. I am used to not looking back anyway, between my softop(with dust on windows is hard to see out) and all the crap I carry around, I rarely look strait back...use my side view mirrors.

 

She treats me very well, that is why I get her all these new toys (of course they are for her..haha ). The way I see it, I can do some strategically placed plastic surgery on her to protect her, or she can get rock rammed up her @$$ and dent all the way up the side (which is much harder to fix).

 

SWEEEEET, I cannot wait. Once it is complete, I will try to get some good pics for you guys. Thanks again, it is great craftsmanship!

 

Weight is actually not much more than the stock bumper (the stock rear is much heavier than I thought). I am not sure becuase I did not weigh it, but just from feel, the base bumper weighs about the same as the stock one. The tire gate is another 40-50 lbs maybe...I could be WAY off, but I can tell you its not nearly as heavy as I imagined when I first saw it on the pallet. I was easily able to lift and carry both the bumper and the gate (seperatly).

As for cost, I do not want to get into that. If you talk to CBI they will get you prices for everything.
This was fully loaded with some additional "extras" I requested. I think the price was MORE than fair for all the skill that went into this thing (take it from someone who dabbles in fabircation, this is quality). At the end of the day, I think I got a hell of a deal

 

and that's all that matters. good job man, ur truck looks great.

 

Yea tire carriers are generally not the place you want to pinch pennies when you're going to be flailing the truck around with a tire mounted to it.

Nice bumper.

 

OK guys, all the parts came in the mail and I finally got around to installing the rest of it. Before I go into the rest of the parts, I want to clarify the cutting portion of the install, as it has gotten the most questions.

First off, I made the cardboard templates you saw in my first post, but for those that just want to measure and cut. I would start with the following measurements:

4.25” below the bottom of the tail light.

START here and then you can trim later. Even with my templates, I made sure to cut a little higher than I wanted and then trimmed it later to get a nice strait cut. Ideally, you want to have about 0.75” clearance around the board. This means that my tail lights have approximately 0.75” clearance underneath them, and the body line cut is 0.75” clearance as well.



Why 0.75”celarnace? Well I took after the install I tool her out for a bit of flexing to see how much the Tacoma flexes. We all know the frames are not boxed and DO flex. Her you can see how it looks when the rear tire is stuffed and frame fully flexed (I had my opposite rear OFF the ground)





You can see that with the frame fully flexed, there is about 0.25” clearance, so my frame flexed 0.5” total.

One the edge was cleaned up and strait, I used some Toyota touch up paint to cover the raw metal edge to stop from rusting. Then I decided to add some of that black plastic door trim crap to clean up the edge, I think it looks pretty good with that:



I also lined the bottom of my table with it and the frame that my table folds up against (the table does rest against it, so metal on metal contact will wear my paint right off, this will help a bit):





After that all that was left was adding the rest of the accessories:

Aux back up lights:



License plate light:



I also used gasket material to make a rubber washer to reduce the metal on metal contact on the main gate latch:



And the final touch, the dual can carrier!:

 

that is awesome... pretty much the same setup i want to do... I LOVE YOUR TRUCK!! Where did you get your gas cans?