Recent content by yota dawg

Tires are always a tough one. The problem with selecting tires is that all you really have to go on is your own experience and the (probably biased) opinions of others. Another problem is that once you decide on a set of tires, you're stuck with 'em for a long time. I knew that I wanted to go...

Wheels and Tires I have to admit that I put more thought into wheels than any other aspect of this build. From design to color to width to offset, there are so many dang factors to consider when it comes to wheels. The two main factors I got hung up on were style (TRD OEM look vs JDM tuner...

Behold! The final result: Thoughts on the Ascend Fabrication high clearance bumper with swingout: Overall this bumper exceeded my expectations. The workmanship was excellent, all the dimensions were exact and the instructions were very good. A lot of the work involved in installing...

Next, you install the plunger strike pad on the bumper: And then the swing out strike pad: And then the bottom bearing and seal on the swingout: Then the swingout gets installed on the bumper with the top bearing, castle nut, cotter pin and top cap (not pictured here):

Then the spring plunger went onto the pivot end of the swingout. As you can see in the second picture, I ran into an issue here as the thickness of the powder coat was interfering with the nut on the spring plunger. I really didn't have much of an option but to push through and let the nut...

Once the bumper is finally installed, things really speed up rom there. Assemble the latch and install it on the latch end of the swingout:

Once the bumper cover is cut, both the bumper cover and the bumper go back on the rig to line up the position of the bumper: Once the position of the bumper relative to the cover is determined, the bumper cover is removed and additional holes are drilled through the frame to secure the...

As many of you may recall, one of my biggest priorities in this build was to NOT have to trim any of the plastic. My brain operates in a very binary fashion, and finding a solution that didn't involve trimming plastic bits was very attractive to me. However, for the rear bumper, I was never...

Rear Bumper Install The instructions for the Ascend Fabrication rear bumper were really quite good. They were very detailed and, in conjunctions with Erik Adventure Lab's video, very little was let to the imagination on the install. The first step was to remove the rear bumper cover from the...

Thanks!

I intend to do a couple of posts of the install of the rear bumper, but at this point I GOTS to give a massive shout out to the Erik's Adventure Lab YouTube channel for his awesome install vid of one of these Ascend Fabrication rear bumpers. Thanks Erik!

As you can see, the Ascend Fabrications bumpers are sent as unpainted, raw metal. In keeping with my "reasonable cost" idea for the rear bumper, I totally intended to paint this baby myself. However, after the effort and trauma of getting the Coastal Offroad front bumper over the finish line...

The ordering process for this unit was very straightforward and done entirely online. The delivery was within the advised lead time. I ordered a pre-welded unit and, consequently, the item has to be shipped freight due to size/weight. For freight shipment, you either have to have it delivered...

REAR BUMPER I pretty much knew from the beginning that I wanted to replace the rear bumper with a unit that incorporated a swing out tire carrier. My priorities for a rear bumper were as follows: 1. Simplicity - I wanted something that would offer some protection and a tire carrier and not...

Once the bumper was painted, I loaded in the winch. I opted for the Smittybilt X20 10K due solely to the fact that, from my research, it appeared to be the most compact winch out there from a total depth perspective (whether it actually is or not, I don't know). Given the super tight space for...