How I installed my bumper (V3) from Dissent Offroad and the BR200 lights (1 Viewer)

[hatchethead]

This document looks like instructions for installing a Dissent Offroad rear bumper (V3), but it’s not. This document is a description of what I did when I installed my bumper. I followed instructions on the bumper install that Dissent shared in their good (but incomplete) YouTube video on the install process. The video has very little detail on installing the BR200 three-way lights, so I described what I did after some online sleuthing and an email exchange with the Dissent ninjas.

The following assumes that Dissent has powder coated your bumper and that you are also mounting Roadmaster BR200 three-way lights. It also requires you to drop and remove the spare tire from the truck.

1. Have and use anti-seize for bolts (esp. stainless bolts). I like to wear nitrile gloves when working with goopy car things, including anti-sieze compound.
2. Drop the spare tire from under the truck to create room to work from inside and under the rear of the vehicle. If the spare tire has been replaced by an auxiliary fuel tank, for example, you will need to adjust creatively some of the following steps.
3. File off nubs and high spots that might be on the rear cross-member or frame. Do the same for other sharp edges and nibs that later cutting creates.
4. Remove the front corner from the pinch weld starting at the rear-tire-well end and extending back 1.25 inches, but only going to 0.25 inches down from the top of the vertical piece. (The video describes this precisely and well.) I cut this out with tin snips (vertical cut) and a sawsall (horizontal cut).
5. Identify rear and front wing stiffeners.
6. Place rear wing stiffener (shaped like a ‘step’). The objective here is to place so the underside bolt holes align with the frame. This means that the vertical bolts (the M14, which will be removed, soon) can be ‘finger tightened’. When the rear wing stiffener is satisfactorily placed, the horizontal bolts (the M8 bolts with ‘thick washers’) can be fully tightened to 30 foot-pounds of torque. The M8 bolts are stainless and should have anti-sieze. Do this for both sides of the truck.
7. Place the front wing stiffener. Finger-tighten the M12 into the top rear hole. Finger-tighten the two vertical M14s into the bottom two holes.
8. Use a pencil to mark the location on the frame of the front-most oblong hole of the front wing stiffener (i.e., trace out that oblong hole onto the frame). The center of this hole should be half-way between the bottom of the frame member and the bottom edge of a horizontal rounded rectangular hole in the fram member, and half-way between the left and right edges of the rounded rectangular hole in the frame member.
9. Remove the front wing stiffener and drill a 5/8 inch hole in the frame at the center of your pencil mark to allow a 3.5 inch bolt to pass through the front hole of the rear wing stiffener and through the frame. This might also require enlarging an existing hole opposite the hole you just drilled. Do so from under the truck, inside the spare tire area. It should be no more difficult that drilling the hole from the outside. NOTE: Dissent recommends using a step-bit to drill and enlarge these holes; I found using a series of bits of increasingly larger diameter cooled by auto oil worked very well (e.g., quickly) for me.
10. Paint all points on the body and frame that have been exposed by cutting or drilling (e.g., pinch weld cut, file points, drilling points). Painting these points reduces potential of corrosion. Proceed when paint has dried sufficiently.
11. Place front wing stiffener in place and fasten to frame with bolts on the side (M14 and 1/2“ by 3/5”) and bottom (M14). Snug the side bolts and place the vertical bolts to confirm alignment. The video says that the nut on the 3.5 inch bolt should be tightened to a point where the frame is seen to pull in a little bit; any tighter will compress the frame too much. Once alignment is confirmed and the side bolts are snug (not too tight), remove the vertical bolts. Do this for both sides of the truck.
12. Before placing the bumper wings, place the Roadmaster BR200 three-way lights on the bumper with provided fasteners. Be sure the reverse light (white) is on the bottom and the turn-signal light (yellow) is on the correct sbumper wing.
13. The 7-pin trailer connector is on the DS wing, slightly to the left of bumper-center. Fasten the receptacle to the bumper with the four bolts and nuts. Feed the connector harness through the hole in the cross-member closest to the center on the left, then feed the harness through the inner cross-member into the spare tire area beneath the truck. The Dissent video shows how they prepare the harness with electrical tape and pre-bending of the wire bundle to prepare its passage from the bumper and through the cross-member.
14. Before placing the bumper, wiring for the BR200 three-way lights need to be spliced into the truck’s electrical harness. The BR200 packaging does not include installation instructions, but it does identify which of its five wires correspond to which light: “Earth - White, Stop - Red, Tail - Brown, Indicator - Green or Yellow, Reverse - Black.” I used ten (10) splice lock connectors for 18/20 guage wires to splice into the wires leading to my tail lights. On my rig, the following wires corresponded to light functions as follows: “white with black - ground, red with blue - reverse, green - tail, green with white - brake, and green with yellow - turn.” My splices were about 5–6’ long. I fed them through the plug-hole in the rear quarter panel that opened into the space behind the bumper. On the back of the plug, I carved away enough of the center structural plastic to allow the wires to feed through the plug and the plug to sit flush with the truck’s body. Hopefully this will keep road dust from getting into the body and cargo area.
15. Check that your splices work and that you have correctly identified which of your splice wires corresponds to which light function (e.g., by attaching your splice wires to the BR200 lights and testing). Once you have wrapped your splices in electricians tape and the bumper is in place, it will be more difficult to fix your electrical work.
16. At this point, the wings can be fully placed. The wings allow for some horizontal play, at this point, and should be placed to align (1) to allow the tailgate to open and close without rubbing on the bumper, and (2) to be as horizontally symmetric as the truck body allows.
17. Upon initial placement and before final adjustment of the bumper, the 7-pin harness will need to be fed connected to the receptacle on the bumper and the harness wires from the BR200 lights should be fed through the frame cross-member and into the spare tire space. The wires that were spliced into the tail lights should be fed behind the bumper wing under the body and up over the frame into the spare tire area. Keep the wires as high a possible. Connecting them to the BR200s will be the last step in this process.
18. Once the bumper wings are sitting properly, the underside M14 bolts can be placed and finger tightened. There’s a single M12 bolt on the each wing that fastens into the top of the rear wing stiffeners; they can be placed and finger tightened. (The rear nut can be placed by reaching up through a hole in the bumper underside.)
19. This is the time to place the external receiver hitch plate on the outside of the bumper. Fastening these into place will secure the bumper and allow the final bolts to be tightened with a torque wrench. The Dissent video is a bit siappointing at this point because it demonstrates this step using a truck whose cross-member is prepared for a high-clearance receiver. “Ninty-percent of trucks won’t have a cross-member l ike this,” the guy in the video says. To that I say, “Then make a video for 90% of your customers, not the 10% with this specialized cross-member!” This differences aren’t great, but this is a serious oversight on Dissent’s part.
20. Place the receiver hitch plate and fit two of the more densely threaded bolts into the top two holes in the plate’s vertical face (not the top to holes going down into the bumper). Finger tighten those bolts to hold the plate in place.
21. From underneath the truck, put the two spacer lates and the backer plate in place. Fit two 4" bolts into the lower pair of holes on the vertiucal faceplate and hand tighten the nuts from behind the bumper. These should hold the three plates in place.
22. From outside the bumper, fit two M14 bolts into the top holes of the plate and hand-tighten the nuts under the bumper. Fit two M14 bolts into the horizontal holes on either side of the receiver and hand tighten the nuts.
23. Tighten the eight bolts in the receiver hitch plate to 95 foot-pounds.
24. Working from the forward-most bolt on the underside of each wing, tighten the M14 bolts on the wings to 95 foot-pounds. Then tighten the stainless steel M8 bolts on the underside of each wing to 30 foot pounds.
25. Tighten each bolt through the top of he bumper into the rear wing sitffeners to 95 foot pounds. This completes the fastening of the bumper to the truck.
26. Connect the BR200 lights to the truck’s tail lights using the wires spliced into the tail lights (right to right and left to left). The BR200 comes with 10–12 crimp splicers. Before connecting the light to the splice wires, make sure to run the wires through the spare tire space so they won’t rub against the tire and can be zip tied to the frame or other wire harnesses already in place. Connect lights to the splice wires.
27. Test that the BR200 lights work correctly. Zip tie wiring into place.
28. Run the wires from the 7-pin trailer connection through the space tire space so it won’t rub against the tire and can be zip tied to the frame or other wire harnesses already in place. Connect those wires to the tail light harness.
29. Test that the 7-pin connection works correctly. Zip tie wiring into place.
30. Now start saving for that swingout arm.

 

[Live to Ski]

U da man!