Well this is my last real major fab project of the term. Took me about 5-6 hours to finish it up and painted everything.

I was a lil unhappy about where I put the hitch after I had it welded. I should have cut all the way throught the cross member and put the top of the hitch flush with the top of the cross member, but for the purpose, it's not all that bad.

It's welded in all places where it was touching either frame or cross member and sits right on top of the lower part of the valence. With how it sits, it gave me about a 1in gap between the bumper and the body, but I'm learning to deal with it. I have a front hitch now. Winch time!

Here's the pics.

Before:



During:




(You can see where I should have gone all the through the cross member, but eh, I'm ok with it now)

After:







And the bumper back on:









Slide in receiver shakle is going to be done and finished tomorrow, awaiting a shackle that I'll pick up from a buddy of mine this weekend!

What do you guys think? Not bad for $20! Hitch was a rear from a toyota 4Runner that a friend of mine had in his shop... He was gonna sell it for $75, but sold it to me for $20 since I go to him for all my parts! Hookups FTW!!!

 

looks nice, be sure to put some pics with the recovery hook on.

 

No pics of the modded hitch itself?? weak...

 

Hang on... I might have a pic of the hitch modified.... Yeah I'll bring the camera and take those pics tomorrow!

EDIT: I think I was going to take pics when I had it cut, and got side tracked... Oops. lol

 

That bumper gap looks AWESOME! :sarcasm:

Glad you got it done finally. I fixed mine yesterday...now i have a nice bumper gap and I'm finally happy with my hitch location. it's perfect. ok...not perfect...but perfecter than it was before.

 

 

Eh, like I said, I'm not fond of the gap... But it's really not as bad in person as it looks in those pics. All my instructors looked at it tonight and were like "Wow, looks factory! Impressed yet again, keep up the good work!" LOL

 

Only bad thing bout the slide in winch mounts is it might not clear your lights etc... i know it hits mine on the ranger, gotta mod that soon...

 

It looks good man

 

sweet!

 

looks great man, good job

 

Looks good Trevor. are there some gussets/supports that we cant see in the pics on the back side? that front cross member is not real strong (at least on my truck) and im not sure i would trust it to pull from, not that it would break, but mine would definitely bend.

 

In this picture you can see the piece of square tubing he added behind the front crossmember that the receiver sits on.

 

Yeah it's a full on rear hitch from a toyota cut to fit inside the frame width wise. It's not just received tubing, it's a full on hitch. Anywhere where the hitch was touching frame or cross member it got a few passes of weld on it!

 

Looks great man.

 

Jealousy!!!

 

trevor has set the bar, once again, for the sickest truck on this site.....

 

Why thank you David!