What have you done to your Tacoma today? 1st Gen Edition

I too want to scoop mine... but finding a hood out here has proven difficult

 

I’ve spent sometime there for work. I’ll pass hahah

 

So this weekend I didn’t close my swing out and drove and a 1/2 mile before realizing lol the mounting surface bent a tad, just enough where it doesn’t close right. My plan is to heat it up and bend it back on the truck. Then pull the bumper off and add some additional reinforcements under to keep it from happening again. Does the manufactured (cbi, relentless, etc) bumpers with swing outs have reinforcements? I feel like my swing out sags more than the pictures of those ones.

 

Finally put on my new wheels and tires. Been sitting in the shed waiting since February.




Tire size 265/70r17 BFG Rugged Terrain.

 

You can see on the second picture that’s looking under at the bottom. I added that 1/4” plate in there but I’m thinking I need to box the whole thing

 

Hard to tell from the pictures, but did the top bumper plate get bent or the actual C-shaped bracket that holds the hinge in there?
It looks like the bracket did from the small gap there is in the rear. Could just be the weight of the swingout doing that too though

 

So the top plate bent did bend, you can see that in person. I think the c bracket might have slightly too.

 

Hm yea that's kind of a tricky fix.
I'd say prob box in that section on the underside of the bumper and then maybe weld a strip of steel down the back side of the C bracket to tie it into the plate in the bumper to make it stronger and prevent it from bending forward as easy.

 

I've got 4XInnovation's rear bumper on my 4Runner if you want to come see what they did on a different application. I get it's a 4Runner bumper and frame location and all else will be different. But it looks like that hinge mechanism is from their DIY kit.

 

Yeah it is the DIY kit from them. I might take you up on that offer! Thanks

 

That was my thought as well. I have 1/4” plate think that’s enough for should I try to get closer to like 1/2” or something

 

That nut is the bottom of the bolt? I.E. it only goes through one piece of 3/16"ish steel. Yeah, I see why it's bent....


It would get a longer bolt and find a few inches of DOM tubing that it fits though, and weld that in.

 

And run it all the way through the bottom? Yeah that’s not a bad idea.

 

That would probably be the best. Even if it was half way and you gusseted the shit out of it, it would probably be way stronger than it is now.

That's how mine is and hasn't caused any issue in years of hard wheeling.

Edit - I'm not an engineer or fabricator.

 

Can you take a picture of your setup?

 

You can get a decent idea from this post.

Squeaky Penguin's (Trip Reports) Build Thread

My main bumper is rectangular tube. There's then some DOM welded through that main tube. The bolt passes through my support plate, the swingout with bronze bushings, and then the sleeved main bumper.

IMO - especially after having a trailer spindle swingout kit, I would never build a swingout another way. You can get the hardware for less than $100 from mcmaster, which is built around a 1.25" grade 8 bolt, that will most certainly outlast the rest of my bumper.

 

That's gonna be a tough one. You have little strength there. C channel base plate, a double shear mount with no back or side supports with only a portion of the solid surface welded to the base. The mount has no support keeping it from doubling over either, although if it did it would most likely break the welded surface off or bend the bumper more. I uh, have suggestions, but they all start with removing all of that.

 

Considering I did it less than a year/less than 10,000 miles ago, I think I’ll pass on it

 

Pretty much this. Also there's a gap in between the two bearings that allows the pivot to drop a bit. Mine was too tall for the bolt to close the gap so I bent it a bit and now it goes snug. You're going to have to support it some way, possibly gussets on the sides and like @Squeaky Penguin said support the underside. Or cut it off and weld it on the face of the bumper, that's how I did mine.