Bored Clerk's Next Rear Bumper!

Picked up the new taillights today. Stop, turn, tail, backup in one tidy package.


6 Red and 2 white. Per side. It's amazing how thin these are. LEDs are straight magic. I hope they work well! If not, I can add a backup light. We'll see soon.


Here's the back. I'll cut off the existing connectors and wire them to the plug I pulled from the OEM taillights. All factory connectors just how I like it.

 

Nice!

 

Getting a great start to the weekend!



Still a lot of work to do but this is a nice place to be right now.

I need to get a 5 wire to 4 wire converter for each taillight. Or a 3-2 converter. Basically, I can have brake lights or turn signals but not both right now with my new lights. They make solutions for this problem. I just need to find the one I like best. And pay more money. As usual.

Enough of that. Let's get this bumper done!! More updates to follow.

 

Glad I sub'd, that thing looks great. What did that Ute bed run you? My work truck is a '97 F350 with a steel ranchhand bed. If the Aussies can stomach the look of a double cab ute bed, I might be able to at some point on my DD. Short bed though, so I'm going to have to really want it.

 

Mine was on sale and I got a small discount for paying in full ahead of time. It was $2495 and I picked it up in Seattle.

 

Progress...


I've got the fill plate pretty dialed in. There are two things left to massage but it's close. It's so freaking hot I'm moving into the house to work on taillights.

 

Decision made.


After a few rounds of this with varied solutions and no resolution, I'm going to stick with the box taillights that came with my flatbed. They'll tuck up nice and neat between the flatbed and the top of the bumper and I KNOW they work! No converters I could find could make the transition I needed to get these new taillights to work properly. I'm done wasting time and money on it.

 

Man, I'm bummed you couldn't make those work as I was looking to do something similar

 

If you did some other creative wiring, you could probably get it to work but it's messier than I'm willing to put up with.

 

All the smoke and ash here is making progress slow. Dust mask in the garage. I picked up some metal for taillight brackets. I didn't want to spend the time to have a set cut and bent so I'm using angle steel and making it work.


I picked up a few fasteners today as well. That was about it.

I have all day Friday off so I'm going to spend it getting the bumper done and out for powdercoat.

 

Are you working with a shop and welding things yourself?

 

I work with a shop if I need something laser cut and bent. Other than that, it's me in my garage. Cutting, welding, grinding, drilling...whatever needs doing. I prefer to get parts laser cut and bent because they come out so much nicer and take less of my time. But, they take calendar time. In this case, calendar time is what I didn't want to spend.

 

project looks good

 

getting some work done today! I'm really pushing to get this bumper to powdercoat by the end of today. I still have a decent amount of work to do but it's close.


Preparing to weld on the taillight mounts. These are so overbuilt it's not even funny but you work with what you have available. And I had 1/4" wall angle steel available.


All welded up! Then I rounded all of the corners and decided to spend WAY too much time and energy drilling these 3/4" holes in the uprights. I think they'll be kind of cool but probably too subtle to have been worth the time.

 

Got so excited to get the bumper out for powdercoat that I forgot to take more pictures. I also forgot to get my backup camera mounted. Oh well, I can do that when it comes back.

Anyway, I should see it back in 7-10 business days. Week after next.

Now we wait...

 

Subd for the finished result

 

Picked up my bumper from powdercoat today!


It all looks pretty good.



I needed to turn down the heads of the bolts on my drill press because...


I needed the head to fit properly into the recess cast into the TeraFlex shackle mounts.

I'll clean them up and treat them with cold bluing for guns. They'll get dark blue/black again. Then all I have to watch out for, as usual with everything on this planet, is rust!

This bumper should be on and ready to rock by the end of the week. I'm going to CAD up some endcaps and have a buddy of mine 3D print them. That'll finish it off nicely.

 

Bumper is on the truck!


Still need the end caps (being printed) and I need to wire up a few things, add the backup cam and license plate. It's close though!