bwell
SILVER Star
Bamber's big sister jumped out in front of our 2008 LX570 returning home from Thanksgiving 10 miles from home. The doe was about 150 lbs, maybe 1 1/2 years old or so, not a large deer but she kissed the front bumper cover at about 45, I got slowed down from 55'ish mph and she darted right last second. Shot the deer about 50 ' from impact. A couple of inches higher, and further to the center and my insurance damage totals could have been significantly higher, I'm glad they weren't, and nothing significant really happened. I wish it would have been colder out, as she would have tasted nice, cleaned and in the deep freezer, but it was already 10 at night I wasn't field cleaning a deer on top of unloading a full car with three kids in tow.
Some of my jargon might not be correct in terms used to describe the install on my LX570, but I'll do my best to answer any questions other LX owners have if they want to install a TJM T13 onto their Lexus.
Honestly my first choice was to have Jason at Trail Tailor build me a bumper, and he was all about it, but he had to many things going on and wouldn't be able to get started until mid January due to other business and personal stuff going on. I wanted a more permanent solution to living in the middle of critter ville sooner than later.
So, against the recommendation of Christo at SLEE, I purchased a TJM T13 from him, and it arrived approximately one week later.
I am only going to address specific issues I noticed, and touch on a couple of things already addressed in another thread created previously for the installation of a T13.
I was impressed with the overall engineering and quality of the bumper itself. I feel it is very well thought out and generally the instructions only left me wondering what to do one time and that was on trimming the airflow directors as I believe TJM refers to them.
The upper bumper support must be completely removed on a 1st gen LX570. Due to differences in the headlight shape between the actual LC200 and LX, this item interferes with the T13 and cannot be retained.
The next issue I had was with the chassis mount block that is fitted into a hole in the frame and adds an additional weight distribution/mounting point for the bumper frame horn adapter plates. This has been addressed before- square peg roundish hole. Quick push with a flapper disc, creating approximately a 1/8" chamfer to the four long edges fits perfectly.
The major issue with these blocks- I believe they're cast and one had significantly not straight threaded hole. Luckily I have a full mac tools metric tap and die set. One required a serious amount of force to cut and clean up. The long threaded m12 x 1.75 bolt wouldn't even go half way in initially. The other block required some clean up also, but wasn't cast/machined as poorly. One of the m12 x 1.75 x 280 mm threaded rods need cleaned up but likely due to packaging.
Some of my jargon might not be correct in terms used to describe the install on my LX570, but I'll do my best to answer any questions other LX owners have if they want to install a TJM T13 onto their Lexus.
Honestly my first choice was to have Jason at Trail Tailor build me a bumper, and he was all about it, but he had to many things going on and wouldn't be able to get started until mid January due to other business and personal stuff going on. I wanted a more permanent solution to living in the middle of critter ville sooner than later.
So, against the recommendation of Christo at SLEE, I purchased a TJM T13 from him, and it arrived approximately one week later.
I am only going to address specific issues I noticed, and touch on a couple of things already addressed in another thread created previously for the installation of a T13.
I was impressed with the overall engineering and quality of the bumper itself. I feel it is very well thought out and generally the instructions only left me wondering what to do one time and that was on trimming the airflow directors as I believe TJM refers to them.
The upper bumper support must be completely removed on a 1st gen LX570. Due to differences in the headlight shape between the actual LC200 and LX, this item interferes with the T13 and cannot be retained.
The next issue I had was with the chassis mount block that is fitted into a hole in the frame and adds an additional weight distribution/mounting point for the bumper frame horn adapter plates. This has been addressed before- square peg roundish hole. Quick push with a flapper disc, creating approximately a 1/8" chamfer to the four long edges fits perfectly.
The major issue with these blocks- I believe they're cast and one had significantly not straight threaded hole. Luckily I have a full mac tools metric tap and die set. One required a serious amount of force to cut and clean up. The long threaded m12 x 1.75 bolt wouldn't even go half way in initially. The other block required some clean up also, but wasn't cast/machined as poorly. One of the m12 x 1.75 x 280 mm threaded rods need cleaned up but likely due to packaging.
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