Fabrication Steps 9, 10, 11, and 12
The outer latch assembly was pretty easy. This was the one that I drilled yesterday to make it a driver's side tire carrier mount. So the work consisted of bolting in the nuts to the one part and then tack weld the other to it. Optional (but I did it) was to tack weld the nuts to the outer plate and then weld the inner part to the outer plate.
Next up was the latch parts which took some time to figure out how to do it properly given that there were two things that needed to be done simultaneously: align the horizontal tube and tack it to the DOM hinge tube and attach the tack the horizontal tube to the latch. The instructions also called to insert a supplied piece of plastic to the top of the bumper deck, align the horizontal tube and tack it, and then tack the latch part to the tube...lots of shit going on and the weight of the horizontal tube made the tube slip and then I'd have to realign, measure, level, etc. So after about 20-30 minutes of going through this, I ended up aligning as best as possible but then making to tiny tack spots on the latch assembly TO the bumper. I stress that they were teeeny tiny tacks. and it worked because it enabled me to focus on leveling the horiz bar and then tacking it onto the DOM vert hinge tube.
Once I tacked all of this, I assembled the latch to the latch assembly. The pic I took is only 1/2 of the latch part.