The first update that I attempted to make on the truck was the one that seemed straight-forward enough: replacing my rusted-out rear chrome step bumper with a new aftermarket one that I found online.
The new bumper came with the plastic step cover trim already installed, and included four brackets and a handful of nuts and bolts (though one nut short of having everything needed for installation).
The new bumper was one of three items that I ordered from one online retailer. The carton that arrived appears to have been a carton that contained four individually packaged bumpers for the sail from Taiwan to the US. The distributor that I purchased from simply threw the two (much smaller) items loose into the large carton and (sort of) sealed it up. As brutalized as this carton was, I was fully expecting the two dashboard switches to have fallen out somewhere in transit, but thankfully they were both still in there.
In case anyone that would ever be shipping something to me like this is reading, know that I would have had no objection to you opening up the smaller carton that contained the single bumper, placing into that carton the two smaller items (with some padding), resealing that carton and shipping it off. Shipping boxes that are three-quarters empty is not efficient or conducive to good handling.
The old bumper came off easily enough. There was a connector to detach the license plate lamps from the wiring harness, and then it was just a matter of taking out a total of eight bolts – three on each side of the frame, and one on the bottom of both frame rails, which bolted through the hitch receiver mount.
Once I found that it was necessary to remove those last two bolts, I realized that the sledge hammer in the photo was actually not needed, all it did was cause a whole lot of crusty rust to fall onto the driveway. With all of the bolts removed, the bumper was able to be pulled straight back and off.
The only minor complication I had was getting those rearmost two bolts for the trailer hitch receiver out (the impact driver did not reach, and the socket wrench barely reached, even with the extension).
There were no instructions included with the new bumper. I guess I should not be surprised … the kind of people that install their own bumpers are not the kind of people that consult the instructions before jumping into a project, right?
As I removed the old bumper, I laid it out so that I could duplicate it and reverse the removal process to have the new one installed the same way.
I attached the new brackets to the new bumper, then placed the bumper up onto the frame of the truck. I wound up reusing the old bolts to attach the new bumper, since the bolts that were provided with the new bumper were just a little too short to bite. This may have been due to the Class V hitch receiver that I had put on a couple of years ago, it is probably a bit thicker than the hitch that came from the factory.
Two of the mounting holes on the brackets of the old bumper brackets had welded-on nuts (for the two aftmost hitch receiver mount bolts that came up from the bottom). The new bumper brackets also had those nuts welded on, in addition to the nuts for the foremost bracket bolts that attached from the sides. I don’t think it was my super-human strength, so I’m guessing that it was a cheap weld, because ALL FOUR of those nuts on the new bracket broke loose when I was installing the new bolts. I had to get a pair of vice grips on those nuts to keep them from spinning around while I was tightening the bolts.
The lock ring that held the spare tire lock mechanism to the bumper was not salvageable. I will put one onto my next Amazon order, but for now I have just left that whole piece off (I’m not too concerned about anyone stealing my spare tire).
