Trail Gear bumper delivered in 3 days. That was fast.

I've never ordered from TG before but amongst my many travels with jeeps and suzuki off-road rigs I've read a LOT about TG making decent products but being slow as molasses. Everyone recommended ordering from some of their dealers but not direct. But I planned on a new bumper in the next month or two and they were doing free shipping in July so I figured why not. No hurry and good price. I *did* select next day shipping when I checked out, it didn't list the price change on the invoice and I figured it would ship ground same as anything regardless.

But 3 days later UPS pulls up as I'm getting ready to go to work, and now I have a small project I don't have a lot of time for. Either they turned around in the speed aspect or I got lucky. In any case I'm not complaining. Now I have to figure out how to get a decent paint job on a bunch of tubes, I'm used to plate!

 

Powder coat it. Not too expensive if u can find a local shop. Probly around $100 best guess for that. Maybe less. Let us know how it goes mounting it. Heard of people having issue's with those aligning properly. Looking to get that exact bumper myself.

 

I decided to just go the hammered route. 2 coats of prime, 2 coats of paint, finished it last night. Painting the tubes is several magnitude a larger pita than plate.

I'll let it sit a few days to harden and probably start the install later this week. I'll update once it's on with (hopefully) no problems It does look better in person than on their webpage, definitely beefier than I expected. I have to find a hawse fairlead and swap the cable out though, bumper doesn't have the room for a roller. And I wouldn't mind if it had a short square stinger for a light mount. The big pointy option they have doesn't look good to me.

I'd planned on going to synthetic anyways but keeping the roller, I like the look better. C'est la vie.

I pulled the winch, bumper etc off my '96, plan on swapping the 2000 bumper over to it and then hopefully sell the truck. TBH, I"m tired of playing with the bumpers

 

The factory cross member between the frame rails causes a problem. It doesn't let the 1st piece slide far enough for all the holes to align. I took a grinder to both sides and beat the metal back a bit, enough that I can get the mount mounted with all but the drivers side exterior bolts. I'll have to pull the bumper and do some more 'fab' work with the grinder to get all the holes to align. Either that or I'll break out the plasma and enlarge the holes a smidge. I'm not too worried about damaging or removing entirely that support, the TG piece is several magnitude stronger.

Either way a little frustrating.

 

I was very happy with my orders from TG. Last one was dual case adapters with 4.7's at my doorstep in under a week.

 

THIS! What a pain in the ass to align...I just used a BFH and got that sunbitch in .

I ordered my bumper on Monday ad had it by Wednesday, not to bad

 

Ok, I spoke with tech support over the weekend and easy fix. Between the 2 trucks in my shop (96 and 00) and the ones they used for the instructions, there are at least 3 different front bumper mounts on 1st gen alone. The truck in the instructions doesn't have the same hardware as the 00 and I glossed over a step. That being



That bar, has to go. This is one of the really really rare times when having a plasma cutter actually comes in handy.


That's a lie, plasma is awesome.

Anyways, 30 seconds later and the mount slid into place correctly without the bfh I was using to get it *almost* lined up.

So onwards with the install!

Once the factory bumper is removed (and it's hardware) you're left with this.


Which looks horrible. The bracket hanging down is mounted with 1 bolt on the fender, and 2 nuts by the battery. The passenger side is the same except it's a bit of a pain due to the air intake. I got the nuts removed without removing the intake though. After that the clearance to get the bracket out is tight on the passenger side but it eventually slid out. Then cut the mud deflector to match the fender instead of hanging down. Much cleaner looking.


And then I decided I didn't care for the silver showing everywhere so I spray bombed it before quitting last night.


Time allowing I'll get it all put together tonight after the paint has cured a bit. I had to order a synthetic winch line to replace my steel cable. They advertise the bumper as not working with a roller, and they're right. It would be doable but the roller will block the receiver entirely too much for it to be useful. Hopefully the rope will show today and I can get it spooled and ready to go.

 

Definitely looks better with the black sheet metal behind it than it did with the silver. The last headache was the fairlead mounting. The supplied hardware was too big for the bumper mounting holes, and it wouldn't have mattered if they weren't. There's not enough room between the bumper and the winch for more than the thickness of a nut and a tiny bit of bolt thread, it's tight. I ended up using some short bolts I had from the previous winch install and put them through from the winch side with the nuts on the fairlead side itself. It looks fine but a minor pain if you don't have the bolts available. I already have a bunch of misc bolt/nuts combos from repeated trips to the hw store. I have matching sizes, both marked "fine" or "rough" and nothing actually screws onto each other. It's nuts. I think menards got a mislabeled batch because the ones I finally actually bolted together before leaving from my 4th trip are labeled differently but match up perfectly I live about 15 miles out of town, so I cussed more than once and test fit before I bought the last batch

And surface mounted some LED's for turn signals along with the synthetic winchline. She is done and on the road.