Hey everyone!

First of all, I want to appologize once again for the lack of updates and me not meeting my deliverables. I am learning more and more that if I am not committed 100% to stuff the sacrifice is that it just takes WAY more time than I want. (I own and manage another company - a hybrid creative and production agency)

With that being said - IT IS NOT DEAD. If anything it's getting better and better. I am a very detail oriented person and I hope that my self inflicted delays on this project and excessive revisions do create a product that stands out from everything else on the market. Our engineer (James Leath from Leath Design) has been a legend in this regard. His perspective on the project has been invaluable. I've said it before but will do so again - we are creating a product that isn't for everyone, and we are making some design decisions that may eliminate some of the market. An ethos that we think will pay as we expand the product line and continue slowly (but surely) building this out.

Bumper Update:

- Am considering deleting the lower-bumper with factory upper bumper option. 90% of our initial feedback has people wanting the full bumper. In reality we could make a small variant to be suitable for running our lower bumper with a factory 96-98 upper bumper but from an initial inventory perspective, this complicates things. I would like to encourage people to give feedback on if the lower bumper (on its own) has some merits. Let the people speak! lol

- The upper bumper and it's mounting point has changed drastically from a structural perspective. We want the upper bumper to be structural but modular and easily removable to access the winch for service. The design has the upper bumper being 3x components (LH, RH and Center) so it will also ship with ease.

- We have cleaned up a lot of aesthetic imperfections, IMO taking the design from "done" to "polished". It has been quite difficult to retain as many bent edges as possible to help ease assembly for the user and to keep the smooth and "pro" aesthetic that this creates.

- I have an order in for our first full steel bumper (upper and lower bumper) cut with all the new design changes. This is in the hands of the manufacture at this point. I do expect that I may run into a couple small things on the upper bumper portion but the lower should be production ready. I'm expecting this to land in my hands next week if all goes well with the supplier. Fingers crossed.

- I need to source hardware. Normal bolts and nuts are easy but I want to provide the nice flush anodized allen head bolts for the components that need to look good. Again, not any other bumpers on the market for the 3rd gen will go to this level of detail.

- I will likely still offer a full steel WIY option with a second option to be steel lower section with assembled and fabricated aluminum upper section. I think this would be the ideal strength/weight combination but will come at a higher cost.

Will ad some updated renders shortly.... Thanks again everyone for your patience.

A couple current renders:


IMG_0778 by Tamarack, on Flickr


IMG_0780 by Tamarack, on Flickr


IMG_0782 by Tamarack, on Flickr


IMG_0777 by Tamarack, on Flickr

Full steel please

Looking forward to seeing pictures of it mounted on the 4Runner.

This is an awesome design. I can't wait to see it on the 4runner

Likely will be the primary option. Thanks for the feedback.

Same... been a long time coming!

Appreciate that. I'll be posting photos here and on our IG as it unfolds.

@ Tamarack.plus (no space)

Exciting to see the progress!

Pictureless bump. The first prototype of the full bumper showed up yesterday afternoon. Been a long time coming, very excited to unwrap this thing and start buzzing it together. Going to plan for an assembly day next week.

That's great news. I subscribed to this thread 26 months ago. I'm still in the market, and I remain quite enthusiastic about rocking one of these one day soon.

Glad to hear this is still in the works, can't wait to see it welded and installed! Still interested and have been holding off on buying a bumper to see more updates on this. Appreciate the updates, I'd be interested in either the steel, or aluminum versions but would most likely go with the aluminum for weight savings

Sent from my Pixel 7 Pro using Tapatalk

I am very grateful for your marathon of loyalty on this project lol. Serioulsy though, I appreciate it. And it's this kind of feedback that makes me happy that we are still pushing on this.

Thanks for all the feedback! Glad to hear some people out there are interested in the weight savings of aluminum like I am. I am liking the hybrid idea more and more.... keep the lower winch mount steel for strength and to help keep cost down, then make the upper bumper out of aluminum for weight savings. But let's just get this steel unit built first!

And on that note... I opened the package that was supposed to be my prototype in preparation for welding it this weekend to find that somehow the supplier cut my previous file that was only parts for the lower bumper (minus all the newest updates). Ugh... sometimes I feel like I can't win! They are promising an expedited cut and turn around to correct the issue, but it's going to put the timeline back another couple of weeks.

That's a bummer about the parts supplier messing that up.

I've been following this from the start and am so happy there is the potential of an alternate to the bulky/excessive options currently out there. Really looking forward to this one!

Been waiting since day one
A little longer won’t hurt anything

**UPDATE**

After the wrong file was cut, we want to cut the correct one to find bend interference. We've now been through 3x upper bumper revisions trying to get a complicated bend to work on our manufacturers machine while trying to keep the rounded top edges that a press brake would provide - easier said than done, especially when learning the capabilities of the machinery. Now we have to move to splitting up the wing components into 3 separate pieces that will basically key together and require vertical welds at the seams. Learning lots which will help speed up future development though...

It's crazy how easy and how much cheaper this thing could be if we were ok to just butt two laser cut metal plates together and have the customer weld them and blend the weld. But that's not how we roll... convincing myself that all these little details will create something different in the end, that people will be excited for.

Appreciate the patience from everyone. I promise, that this design WILL see the light of day soon.

Thanks all!

Thanks for the update and I surely do appreciate your attention to detail. It is indeed this focus that will result in a final finished product of distinction.

I'm curious about the aluminum option, which would likely be my preference dependent on pricing/weight differential. Are you able to develop aluminum alongside the steel platform? Certainly there are a number of machining differences to account for between the two materials. Presumably steel remains the design focus; but will aluminum be a parallel product release, or follow later? Also, I seem to recall discussion that only the upper section would have an aluminum option, with the lower section available only in steel, is that correct?

Looking forward to the final product iteration!