Demello Offroad Winch Bumper - Modified
After poring over the interwebs trying to decide on a bumper since about mid 2014 when I had my '07 Tundra (RIP), I had really took a liking to the Demello winch bumper. Then I dinked around, told myself to hold off on dropping the coin on it, and tried like hell to find on that I liked more that cost less. The end result, I found plenty of bumpers that looked nice, had mixed reviews as to the build quality and fitment, and didn't have the same functional feature set and aesthetics that the Demello bumper has. I talked with Jason in April of this year and ordered mine, in raw steel, to get shipped all the way out here to the midwest. It showed up quick and I was immediately impressed... Then I immediately made plans to put it under the knife.
1) I've got nothing against having fabricators branding on their parts, but I wanted to be different. So, I came up with a version of the Toyota Trucks emblem, drew up the files and cut some 1/8" plate at work. I'm not a welder so I asked one of our welders to take care of cutting out the DO emblem, welding in the Toyota Trucks "T" emblem, welding on some brackets for the 30-inch led bar, and filling in the parking sensor holes. Lo and behold, he welded the damn emblem in upside down. Unfortunately I don't have pictures, it was embarrassing enough having everybody in the shop let me know after the fact that he's not that great of a welder and he didn't get the nickname "Hammer Hands" for his DaVincian intellect or finesse.
2) Once I made another plate and had it welded in by someone more capable, I took it home, shot it with some Rustolem because my father in-law wanted to see how it would look when finished, and test fit all the lights.
3) After a grueling month long wait at the powder coating shop I tackled the install, which took me about 5 hours total. Most of which was getting the stock stuff off of there.
4) I had a new grille surround that I was installing too, the crome was fu***d on the original one. That whole process took me longer than the entire bumper removal and install.
5) Now to pick out a winch... and pull the bumper off again to install it... thankfully Jason and his team at Demello Offroad designed this thing thoughtfully and removal and install of just the Demello bumper should only take like 2.5 hours. One note, the power steering cooler up front rests right up against the backside of the bumper winch plate so I bent the brackets back about 1/4-inch.
6) Made sure to give credit to Demello as far as branding goes, I got their winch hawse fairlead... still have to get a dang winch though.
7) Had to swap the struts out on the wife's Lexus RX350, gotta make sure I keep in her good graces with the Tundra fund
that and her car was riding like a friggin buckboard wagon.
8) Truck looked pretty good, sitting on the freeway waiting on an overturned semi to get towed off. Can't wait to get out of the flatlands here soon and start putting the thing to good use.
9) Time for the wiring jabberwokkie :banghead: