PSA Demello off-road bumper - check your AC line clearance

I installed my Demello offroad bumper about a year ago. I recently lost my AC. I didn't put 2 + 2 together, so I took the truck to the dealer assuming it would be warrantied work. $165 later, they noted that an AC line was damaged from the front bumper and that it was my responsibility. They wanted $900 to replace the AC line (hahahaha).



I ordered the replacement line myself for $65 online, but I digress.

As soon as I pulled the grille, the problem was right there in my face. Even though I bent the AC line initially during install, it had enough give to settle right against the bumper. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no no no no. It took a year to wear the pipe down and cause a tiny leak.



I pulled the line and cleaned it up, and sure enough after close inspection there is the tiniest of tiny pinholes dead in the center of the line where it rubbed the bumper. It doesn't take a big hole at 200psi.



I did a few things. I ground the bumper down in that area with a dremel, and I used some nuts (maybe 8mm wide) behind the evaporator mounts to tilt it forward and away from the bumper. These changes afforded about 2-3mm in clearance to the new tube. To their credit, Demello's instructions do say to be very careful of the AC lines and to gently bend them during install. I highly recommend doing what I did- there's really no easy way to bend the line away from the bumper because of the prebend there already near the connector. The bumper would ideally just have more clearance in that corner.

Here's the nuts behind the evap mounts.


Here's the new AC line also showing the bumper ground down in that area (and hastily painted so no raw metal). There's a good 3mm of clearance now without bending the AC line from stock. I would very highly recommend grinding a few mm of the bumper away in that corner prior to install.



Toyota is servicing the AC Monday to include a full service and recharge for another $160 and I'm sure I'll be good from then on.

So, all spoken for this mishap will end up costing me about $400.

Sometimes I feel very stupid modifying and breaking a perfectly good vehicle haha.

For anyone with this bumper, you can look down from behind the grille and check your line clearance here. If it's touching, I recommend you do something before it leaks out like mine. For anyone installing one in the future, take the precautions to get clearance.

 

Good psa to have. Good work OP!

 

I've seen that happen on aluminum lines chafing against rubber baffle seals. Doesn't take much if the conditions are right. High vibration places will obviously wear through faster. With aluminum lines it seems that clearance or a tight seal is better than loosely sealed or lightly touching.

 

I’ll check first thing tomorrow morning , thanks for the heads up. I had it installed at Demello roughly 6-7 months ago.

 

Ya, take a picture please, let's see what they did.

 

bad pics, but here you go. It clears it just fine.
Not sure if it makes a difference, but i have the aluminum model.

 

Thanks for the PSA. This is a known "compatibility issue" carried over from 2nd gens. The All-Pro knockoff eBay bumpers originally had the same problem. Later units received a 3" hole to clear the A/C line. Since the condenser is mounted on the body and the bumper is mounted on the frame, sometimes even 1/2" clearance can get eaten up when wheeling hard.

I used a hole saw to cut mine when I modified my Pelfrey 2nd gen bumper to fit my 3rd gen:

 

Thanks for sharing! They bent that line a lot more than I felt comfortable doing. I should have picked up a tube bender, I was worried about damaging the nearby flange. That looks ok to me.

 

That's a legitimate concern. The flange has only a single bolt offset to the side, so it's already susceptible to side loading. Tweak the line too much and the flange may leak.

 

Check you CBI bumpers too! I didn't think anything of this post, but was under the truck today and thought I'd check it out. Sure enough, I'm rubbing a good sized dent. Doesn't appear to be ruptured, so I likely caught it just in time. My CBI bumper is aluminum, if that makes a difference.

You can take out the two bolts at the top of the AC condenser to slide it over to the right while conducting your grinding.

Before any work was done


Here you can see the cut/grind I did and the dent in the line. The condenser was moved to the right in this picture, giving you an idea of how much room you have to work with.


And here it is all put back together. I noticed the same line in the engine bay had some wire loom protecting it, so I used some here as well, just as some added protection.


And as a bonus PSA... wear your damn PPE when things are spinning really fast!

 

I will be inspecting the ac lines etc for sure on my BA bumper.