Leaderboard

I used 4 sets of these (you would need only 2). Mostly all stainless steel & bought as is from Ace, Lowes &/or Home Depot. (I was living in an apartment in PHX with very few tools or resources). This is what they look like after 14 years.

Testing continues and the visors continue to pass with flying colors. Here's a little photo to demonstrate the amount of rain we had last night. Pay attention to the amount of rain in the gutter and on the sidewalk. It poured all night and morning and the inside is cool and dry.

Manual transmission.

I received the light bar. Here are some initial thoughts. The boxing for shipping was disappointing. It looks like they basically pulled it off the shelf and stuck a mailing label on it. They taped the wiring harness box just to the light bar box and shipped. Definitely not Amazon. Within the box it was bubble wrapped and thankfully, unharmed. Here's a close up of the light bar. I was hoping that each individual led would have a lens, but it doesn't. I guess it's ok. It came with some hardware and brackets. There were no installation instructions, but I assumed these bolts are for the sides of the brackets to attach to the light bar. It's an unusual bolt head and uses a special Allen wrench, which was included. One thing I like about this is that I could turn the brackets around backwards and mount them underneath. The holes for mounting came up at just an inch too much to fit the existing rails. Too bad. It came with a harness. I tried hooking the the wires of the light bar directly to a 12v battery without this special harness. When I did so all I had was on and off with a white light. Three wires from the red control box toward the light bar are around 6 1/2 feet long. It is in a loom and has female spade ends for connections. I was disappointed to find the wires from the led light bar was pretty short and did not have any male connectors to match the wiring harness. The wires from the red control box to the battery are only a foot and a half long, but do have good little rings to connect to the battery. This short wire means that the control box will have to be mounted close to the battery. The red wire from the control box to the battery has a 20amp fuse. The red control box is connected to this little remote control, which it appears could be put on a key ring or attached someplace with the 3M pad. I don't think it would hold up long as a key fob. instructions for mounting were not included, but the wiring harness had some. There ya go, my initial thoughts on my purchase. I can't wait to play with it a little. I've got to figure out how and where to run the wires and mount it. I am going to need some new brackets to mount it to the stock roof rails.

Appreciated! I think that's the catch about most off-road bumpers...you never really know how it's going to handle unless you accounted for a specific purpose (like big 'ol deer guards on semi trucks...a very singular purpose). Tube, plate, and formed steel construction have very different characteristics, too. Plate is surely the best impact wise because of its hard angles and fully-welded/bent seams, but as such will also weigh more. You can reduce weight with thinner steel, but then other reinforcements are needed. ARB uses 3mm steel (just under 1/8"), but still comes in close to 90-100 lbs for the R50 bumper, and it's still quite big. Dustin's bumper (the other current thread) turned out great; it's a beast of a bumper. I'd estimate the weight of my setup is probably half that, though. I would have liked to have gone plate, but when I started doing the front bumper, it boiled down to what was feasible in the garage; I didn't have a way to cut plate or make long cuts (to be honest, I really didn't even know how plasma cutters worked until this year!), nor a way to bend round tube. I had a chopsaw and protractor (and I hate dealing with angles). I think it's turned out well for what it is, and it's definitely been a learning experience.

Good design and fab work! I like the stick out and agree that with an angle back towards the wheel would look cleaner visually. I'd go so far as to say that an angle towards the the rear wheels would look good both from the side and from the rear. That is ti say, 2 changes could be made.... But I'm not doing the fab, just commenting from the galley lol. In any case I like the reasoning for the build. Keep things light and functional, not a hardcore bumper or guard but still much mote stout than stock.

Pics? Been thinking about it kind of wanna see what it looks like Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

Time to replace them. It generally requires getting the chassis and axle on jack stands, removing the shocks, and using a floor jack to lower one side of the axle at a time to let the spring extend. Or, use spring compressors. These are OE replacements at 50% the cost of OE: http://www.amazon.com/Febest-Nissan-Bumper-Spring-55240-0W010/dp/B00C6MTQIW

Nice work! I like your locking solution for the recovery boards. Are they difficult to get at with the key?

Not going to use them. Mr Cox 96R50-97JR50