Improving the Front Metal-tech Bumper

canadian bum · May 5, 2019

So I purchased a Metal-tech front bumper just over a year ago, and even initially I felt improvements needed to be made. The winch substructure is awesome and I had no complaints with it, and it looks pretty decent. But the actual bumper shell was quite flimsy. So added in some reinforcement plating to strengthen it up as well as cleaned up some welds to clean up the look. Got out the tube bender and added a hoop on the front to add a place for my VHF antenna but also more importantly get some more strength into the bumper.

The first pic shows how the bumper came and before adding on more bracing behind, unfortunately no picture since it was a rush to get it to powder coat. And with the added tube hoop.

canadian bum · May 5, 2019

The second fairly major issue I had with this bumper was the terrible protection for the radiator, specifically the entire lower rad tank is exposed and the lower bolt on piece is 1/16th essentially tin. And I was planning to deal with it in the future, but unfortunately while doing some winter wheeling some ice smashed the lower rad tank and caused a leak that I was able to bend the core back over the tank. Luckily I didn't smash the plastic tank off completely or I would have been on a trailer instead of limping home to the shop. In the end I had to replace the radiator and I built a proper protection plate to keep this from happening in the future.

In conclusion the bumpers are nice and all but for actual use require a little attention to get them the rest of the way there. But they are an okay base to start off of. May have been better just to build my own bumper but didn't really have the time to put towards that project.

Here you can see how exposed the lower rad is with the tin that is provided as protection. The entire lower rad tank is completely exposed. There was a piece of foam in there initially from the factory but that was it.

Can see where my condenser took a whack from the ice but luckily it is still okay.

I made a template and you can see the difference in size of coverage. The new front plate bolts to the winch substructure as well as the front skid plate mount bolts. I made the new plate out of 1/8th to keep weight down and I don't wheel this vehicle hard so I didn't need to get too carried away.