Flatland 4 X 4 front bumper & Winch Installation

I am in no way associated with Flatland 4 X 4, Smittybuilt etc. so any references to either company are purley for discussion purposes.

I will start this posting in the middle of the process as pictures of welding and grinding are of little interest to everyone...

The Truck: 1996 Tacoma 4 X 4 Automatic 3.4 176K on the odo

The bumper:
Easy to purchase the plans and get the files. The metal is a bit of a issue. Flatlad has a minimum recomendation of 3/16 plate and I choose to use 3/16. Metal supply houses want to sell you full sheets, either 4 X 8 or 4 X 10. If you are lucky you might find a remnant that is big enough. A 4 X 8 sheet of 3/16 plate requires a forklift or lots of guys with gloves to lift and carry, anything thicker is power equipment only. The only issue I have with Flatlands plans is that the square tube is an odd size tube and could not be sourced locally and was prohibitively expensive out of state so I modified from the original plans for this. Material costs apx $300 with plate left over. Water jetting apx $300.

The Winch: Smittybuilt 9500 lb purchased from 4 Wheel Parts because they sent me a sale catalogue. Cost $295 + tax. Same price as the Harbour Freight unit but this unit has a pretty good duty cycle, the H.F. unit has a 5% duty cycle at full pull... almost worthless.

Inital observations: The bumper is heavy, very heavy. I do all of the by myself so I have to be creative in how I get things done. Having said that, I welded a chain on the top and got the balance almost perfect. Put the engine hoist to work and it lines up good enough to start the bolts. I made a mistake in thinking I could measure the center to center distance on the frame and transfer that to the bumper mounts and have the bumper line up width wise side to side, level across the top and level fron to back. It required that I elongate most of the holes to get it to fit so that it looks correct. If you can attach the plates that go on the side of the frame and swing the bumper into position, tack it and remove the bumper for final welding you will be saving your self lots of work. I couldnt get to my welder to the truck or the truck to the welder do to other ongoing projects so I winged it.


here are some pics... more to follow as I make progress.

 

man has it been 2 months since I worked on her, I guess it has. I got the LED lights pocketed in the bumper the other eve and I have moved on to the electrical aspect of the winch install and I figured i would ask before I proceed... where do you guys with winches mount the winch relay box. Out in the open? on top of the winch or ? and WHY did you put it where you put it.

Second question... I am going to put a 200 amp constant duty solenoid in between the battery and the winch "line in"... My thinking is this. If there is an accident where I run into something I dont want to pinch the 2ga? positive lead off the battery against the frame/chassis so if I put the soleinoid inside the engine compartment and have the lead to the winch only energized when I need it (by switch), it should be "safer", comments and suggestions are encouraged.

 

Hi I will soon be starting my bumper build and I'm also wondering where to locate the solenoid for my winch? I was also thinking about using a solenoid and switch on the main power so your not driving around with all that amperage encase of an accident or failure of cheap Chinese electronics. I was told my bumper kit should be shipped out today by the company I ordered it from (Black Widow Gear) Cant wait to get started on it! Have you made any progress?

 

I put in a BlueSeas switch between my battery and winch. It’s good for 600 amps.

 

any constant duty selonoid capable of 100 amps will work... it has to be constant duty, a starter seloniod is not constant duty. NAPA, O'Reilly etc should have them.

I had her driven to Cabo last week. She has a new home so she can play on the beach, in the hills and find new surf/paddle board spots.

The liscense plate holder is attached to the roller fairlead with half sections of PVC pipe rivitted to the aluminum plate holder then they "Clip" onto the rollers and I have springs just in case. 50 Mexican registered cars can drive by with no front plate but a gringo vehicle... reds and blues and mordida.

 

She finally made to my place in Cabo. Supposed to go wheeling with the Jeep crew Saturday, we will see. It rained like hell for maybe 20 minutes yesterday and I had to wade through about 6 inches of water to get to the truck, the streets were so hot that the run off and puddles of water were probably 105 degrees.

 

so the total cost of this bumper was $600??

 

plans, materials, water jetting, yes. Unless you can find scrapes large enough for the pieces you will be forced to buy a whole 4 X 8 sheet of plate. That is the policy of the ONLY metals supply store left in east county San Diego CA.