Hey guys, David just turned me on to this site. Let me see if I can address a few questions, concerns and comments.
This is our first attempt at the 2010 4runner front end. Let me first say this new runner is really nice. David was nice enough to let us barrow it for a little while to make sliders and a bumper for it.
Some have expressed wanting a bumper that goes up to the lights. Let me tell you why we didn't do it this way. There are a number of reasons. The biggest is IMO weight. There is really no benefit from running metal up to the bottom of the lights and wrap it around the side. It doesn't offer any benefits and only offers more weight added to the front of the truck. I know some are concerned with cutting the plastic. Which I understand that some will not want to cut bumpers up on a 30-40k truck. It's really not hard to do it's plastic and cuts pretty easy. The other issue with running a bumper up to the lights is body on frame movement. We learned from the FJC that the bodies like to move independently a lot in relation to the frame. Meaning you would get a lot of contact between the bumper and the lights or other body parts unless you have a good .5in or bigger gap to allow for this.
The lines of the cut, looking over the pictures it does look like the cut on the bumper could have been done a little cleaner, I will have David come back in so we can fix that. I didn't notice it till I saw the pictures.
I think the gap in the hood is a black plastic piece that we failed to re-install, anther issue we will take up with David when he has time to return.
If we did build this into a production bumper we would change a couple things, we would move the winch hole and shackles to the front of the bumper kinda filling that gap that the width of this truck makes.
Overall were happy with the way it turned out, I know there are a few concerned about modifying the stock bumper and that seems to be the biggest complaint. But it's going to be more and more common as car manufactures keep adding more and more plastic to trucks. The rear of the FJ bumper is very similar in that you need to cut up your stock rear bumper completely to make it fit.
Keep the comments coming, were using this feedback to help make better products every day.