I love my 3-hoop Coastal bumper!

I see a lot of people saying "don't powder coat your bumpers if you plan to actually use them" - but I disagree. A proper powder coat is highly durable. Unless you plan to rake the entire bumper on every rock you see while doing some extreme rock climbing, the powder coat should hold up just fine. From personal experience - my brother having two bumpers powder coated, and then mine being powder coated - and each bumper getting put to use (definitely not mall crawlers - as evident by our trucks' paint - but admittedly not rock crawlers) - and are just fine. If you somehow happen to get a small chip (say from a rock while going down the road or something), it can easily be fixed with black nail polish - yes, that's right, nail polish - works great, can be applied with high accuracy, and matches that gloss look of a flat black powder coat enough to be unnoticeable

It was my first weld job ever and wasn't terrible. I did have some help from my brother and dad, who have welded before, but I still did a lot of it on my own. In hindsight, I went too crazy on the grinder, and not crazy enough on the welder. There were a few spots I had to reweld because I took too much off with the flap disk and you could see the crack of the joint. Also, I got impatient and ground the outside welds before welding the inside - HUGE rookie mistake right there, led to a lot of heat warping and joint cracks on the outside. Overall though, it still looks great. Once it was powder coated and I got it muddy, the thing looks b-e-a-utiful

However - be prepared for a lot of work to get the hoops on. It took 1 extra tube, a tube notcher, more cuts than I can count, and even more grinding to get mine where they needed to be

The first tube we cut too short, so we ordered a new one from Coastal and bought a tube notcher. Part of our struggle was being inexperienced - we had never actually notched tubing before - but there's also just so many angles that have to be taken into account so it fits right

What everyone else has already said is great advice - minus the "leave a one inch gap" one, that's a little overkill - instructions say 1/2", and that should be plenty for the front

The only thing I would add is about the hoops - cut them long, and just grind the crap out of them. Cut it to be sorta close but still long > hold it on the bumper to see what touches > grind that part back some > hold it back up there and repeat. It can be really tedious work, but it's what worked best for me

Oh, and one more thing - LOTS and LOTS of practice welding tubes. I practiced before doing mine, but tube welds are hard to make look good. Mine are good enough to hold it together and be strong, but just don't look too close cause they kinda ugly