Page 9 of 10 FirstFirst ... 78910 LastLast
Results 81 to 90 of 92

Thread: Re-building/Repairing a TJM Bumper

  1. #81

    Re: Re-building/Repairing a TJM Bumper

    843Tacoma,

    Seriously, if you have the main piece, you can mock up the wings out of cardboard. There are really no funky angles on those wings. Before I gave the bumper to Mike, I had thoughts of measuring the dimensions of the T17. Yes, its that linear w/ exception of the bottom part of the center section. So raid the local Fedex or UPS of large boxes, blade, ruler, and scissors and make a cardboard mockup template.

  2. #82

    Re: Re-building/Repairing a TJM Bumper

    Great job on the bumper! How are the LEDs working out on the front bumper?
    Cupholder Mod

  3. #83

    Re: Re-building/Repairing a TJM Bumper

    They work really well. I have them as running lights and turn signals. Nice and sealed and just the right brightness.

  4. #84

    Re: Re-building/Repairing a TJM Bumper

    With winter here I've been doing a lot of driving in the dark. The factory headlights are only ok so I decided to get the Hella Micro DE's back on the 4Runner some how. The factory bumper had cutouts so the lights lived on the inside of the bumper. I had thought about integrating them into the TJM but there wasn't as much space in the locations I wanted them. Plus the lights would have had to be aimed pretty downward to do the job correctly.

    Lights. These have a 3000K HID DDM kit in them.


    I found a nice little spot on the side of the frame rails where the TJM bumper mount bolts to. I used 2 factory bolts to hold a little mounting perch that I made out of some scrap.



    They are just slapped together but hold the light much better than the old set up. I capped the end of the square tube to keep water out but I may also drill and tap the cap to mount my rocklights as they lived where the Hellas do now.

    Here you can see a partial install. My 4Runner came with the Micro DE's stock with a switch as part of the turn signal stalk. When I removed the stock bumper I wired the turn signals into the stalk switch and used them as running lights. Here one DE is wired and one turn signal wired. You can see the driver side DE tucked under near the frame.


    Here they both are.


    I no longer have my turn signals as running lights but I may pull a wire from the side marker light if I feel the need. The DE's are about a foot inward from where the used to be but you can't tell when driving. These lights, especially with the HID, have a lot of side spill and are much brighter than the stock H3 bulb. I still have some aiming to do but I'm very happy with them and glad I finally found some time to get them back on.

  5. #85

    Re: Re-building/Repairing a TJM Bumper

    mike, looks really goood! merry christmas . im up in walnut creek since yesterday fyi

  6. #86

    Re: Re-building/Repairing a TJM Bumper

    Merry Christmas Bob. I see you came to join us for our wet weather. We've been hosting family for the past 4 days so now we're going to try to hit the road and spend some time in the snow.

    Thank you and Merry Christmas to you and your family as well.

  7. #87

    Re: Re-building/Repairing a TJM Bumper

    Looks good! I used the heck out of my HID micro DE's in all of this rainy/foggy mountain driving I did over the holidays.

  8. #88
    Well it looks like I'll be doing a little more work on the bumper. The repair and work I did on it seem to be holding up just fine but it needs a new coat of paint. I'm also going to be building a box or sort of case for a 20" light bar. My HID retrofitted Hella 500 FF's were stolen off the bumper and for not much more I can get into an LED bar.



    I did some research and looked around and found I wanted a single row bar, not too wide and not too narrow. I ended up with a 20" Rough Country bar. It's got 18.5w Cree's and the box says it puts out 8,000 lumens (the website says 7,200 lumens).





    It's nothing too special but it is very nice. It's got two mounting options and has a super robust plug and play wiring kit. I plan to use the wiring I have in place from the Hellas, I just have to build something to put the light in. My 4Runner lives outside so I don't want this stolen. The 500's were actually my second set stolen. I had a pair stolen off my pickup right after I bought the 4runner.

    The box thing will be welded in place. I think I'm also going to make a cap or sorts to encase the mounting bolts under the bumper. My HID's were 55w and I think somewhere in the neighborhood of 6000 lumens each. This bar at ~7200-8000 has so much spill it appears so much brighter and much whiter.

    This shot is from Pismo. My PIAA headlight bulbs and HID fog lights fill in so much of the foreground. The Hellas have a lot of throw which is good for roads and trails but in a place like Pismo you see a lot of just the beams.


    The 20" bar is just a wall of light. It has throw but not like the Hellas or individual lights.


    Installing this is not high on my priority list but I'll be scraping time here and there to fab something up.

  9. #89
    Finished up my cap. I was too lazy to head to the steel shop so I used 3/16" as I had a large enough sheet with at least two straight edges to work off of. I was hoping to use something thinner just because it's easier to work with but 3/16 is pretty forgiving in terms of grinding flat and bending. One down side of 3/16 is that the thickness makes scoring and bending hard. The score has to be pretty wide otherwise the material folds into itself before 90*. I wanted to score and bend to make the front-top of the cap look as clean as possible (not all wavy and ground down).

    Without going into detail on how this is affixed, the light bar and the cap are bolted to the bumper (not each other). To get the bar off you have to remove the cap. Hopefully this is enough work that people will leave it alone and move onto something else, hopefully on another vehicle.

    I tired to keep the material in one piece as much as possible to reduce welding and make the left side match the right side. There are angles and what not but most of my measurements were eyeballed. I only had a half baked idea in my head of how this was going to look and work so I figured little things out as I went along.



    This is after much cutting, grinding and head scratching. The front-side wings were scored but broke off when I knocked the piece off the bench. This set me back because the light opening went all polygon on me and it was a 5 hand job to get things all lined up and held in place for spot welding. Once spot welded the wings were no longer movable so I had to tack them on three more times before final welding. This was one of the times I wished I was using a thinner steel. Eyeballing angles and fitment was difficult with chubby pieces.


    Then there was the fitting process. This bumper was crashed prior to me getting it and after the rebuild a small twist and bend remained. Nothing like building something super straight and flat only to put it on a twisted base. I used a flap disc and Roloc pads to massage everything into place.


    Then paint and waiting for night.




    At 20" long and single row, the light only has one type of optic on the 18.5w emitters. Longer lights and double row have floods on the side and spot in the middle. The emitters are also smaller, 10w, so there is room for such optics. My bar shoots straight forward with a beam that is concentrated yet has a lot of spill, just not super wide. While driving the sides are a bit dark but nothing like it is when you turn off the bar. Overall I'm really happy with how the cap turned out, the size and quality of the bar and the light output.
    Last edited by 4x4mike; 02-02-2016 at 06:36 AM.

  10. #90

Page 9 of 10 FirstFirst ... 78910 LastLast

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •