Well, I am psyched, but also a little bummed. An 18 wheeler pulled up and dropped off my ARB bumper yesterday (6 days, $609, and free freight! What a deal!) and I went home early today to see what I could do. I started yanking off my stock bumper and found more damage on the fender that was never noticed during the estimate. Bent in corner, small scratch, etc. I decided that a little touch up paint and a little gentle bending was the better way to go rather than let some body shop screw up the whole fender. That is until later when I noticed a crack in the paint in the middle of the fender. Not good. I have no idea what to do since I already installed the ARB.

Oh, and I found a nice easy trick to doing the bumper solo. At first I tried the "put the rear bolts in and tilt the bumper up until it scratches your fender" method. I didn't like that one. Luckily the scratch is on the damaged fender. This is on the right track though, so instead of bolts, I used big zip ties which allowed the rear to hang an inch lower, and now the bumper cleared the fenders.
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Lift, place a jackstand under the front, and thread in a couple more bolts. Then I cut the zip ties, and popped in the rear bolts. Yeah, right. Those rear bolt holes were off by about a half inch. But then an idea came to me that would make my shop teacher roll over in his grave. I pryed out the ears so that I could just slip the grade eight bolt through kind of diagonally... and then I wrenched it in. And then I placed the nut on and cranked away. Well, that pulled it in all the way, I just doubt I will be able to ever get it off. What a hack. I know. I will need to do something to get that thing lined up a little better, but it was getting dark.

Gentlemen, LIGHT YOUR FLAMETHROWERS!

Nice work. I think I am giving up on Calmini and getting an ARB. I called them this morning and they said it would be another 3 weeks or so. So that means 6 weeks or so in reality. Are you the dude who got free shipping from Central 4WD? They won't ship it to me for free at my residence, I tried.

Yeah, that was me. I'm surprised they won't deliver to you. I'm all the way out in MA. I have the invoice right here and it even says on it "Free frt + reidential fee" and they billed my card for $609. You could always get the one for $595 and have it delivered to a place of business I guess. Big box though. You will need a pick up or a trailer to get it home.

Here's a finished pic



[ 11-08-2001: Message edited by: Gotmud? ]

Nah, it will fit in the Xterra with the rear seats folded:
[img]http://albums.photopoint.com/j/View?u=1485609&a=13845344&p=54985973&Sequence=0[/img]
Bring some bungies for the rear hatch

I picked mine up in Seattle and was able to close the hatch. Just stand the bumper up, l and wrap it around the seat. $589, no tax and no shipping charges!

Yeah snoopy you amateur I got my hatch to close. I also wrestled it in there by myself. You should be ashamed of yourself snoop.

Heh, Heh

Even in the shipping box? You the man!

Not only was it in the shipping box but I had my speaker box in the rear. Now that I think about it how the hell did I get it in there. I remember I couldn't see anything out the rear.

Gotmud, I just had to rate you a 5 for the wiretie improv.
If you want to get the last bolt hole to line up, you'll have to pull out a grindstone (probably on a dremel) and go to work on it (it'll take a while), or you can speed things up a bit (if you are careful) and use both a grindstone and a drill to get the extra ~.5"

Nice job on the write up!!! Where were you this morning?????

I just put my ARB on today as well. Took about 30 minutes to get the old bumper off, and about 15 minutes to get the ARB on...with the help of Todd from EOE of course!!!

What did you do to mount your license plate? Mine is just held on with zip ties, and a piece of duct tape for the time being.

OOps that is a bigger shipping box than I had. I picked mine up at ARB in Seattle, so it was wrapped in plastic and double wall cardboard.

You should have an angled gold colored bracket in your bag o bolts



Did all your bolt holes line up? Especially the rear holes? 15 minutes. Hmmm, I took about a 1/2 hour to get the stock stuff off, an hour to get this thing figured out, and another hour to put away all my tools

[ 11-09-2001: Message edited by: Gotmud? ]

it took Rich that little time
because 2 weekends ago he was helping in instalation of 4 arb bumpers

and power tools rule

exactly! I helped install 4 last week. 5 of us bought them ,and 1 (mine of course) wasn't shipped with the others.

Every bolt lined up perfectly!! Out of the other 4 installed, mine seemed to line up the easiest.

Thanks for telling me about the bracket!! I do have that. I think I was the only 1 out of the 5 that have a front license plate, so when we did those, I didn't give it a second thought.

Thanks,

Rich

Hey what bracket is that. I have the whole bag of arb screws and I don't know which one is for the licence plate. someone post a pic of the friggin bracket. I am driving across texas in january and dual plates are required here. I don't know how I have been getting away with it all this time.

If you look at the close-up pic of my plate you can see most of the bracket just above my plate. The only part hidden by the plate are two little ears that come down about an inch with holes that almost match your license plate holes.

Its just a 7 or 8 inch, by about 1 inch, 45 degree angled gold bar with four screw holes in it. All it does is change the angle from the bumper so your plate goes straight up and down. It only attaches to the top license plate screws.

I had to dig around to find it.

Rich : i think that bracket maybe riped off while offroad , and i can think of couple of places where i would lose my plate if i had the bracket installed (waag eater, is one of them, fish bowl is the other one ... )

if you are not planing to get winch for now, why not use two holes on the front of the arb and attach plate there ( they dont align with the plate , so making 2 small holes in the plate will be required, but this way , it aint going anywhere)

Got Mud... Nice eh? Much better than buying another stock one off of ebay! Damn I'm jealous. I thought I had seen a solo install using some climbing gear and garage roof trusses.

Now if only someone would back into me hard enough to claim insurance I'd be all set!

Looks sweet!

Hye Got Mud, you got lucky! I called Central 4WD again and they said that nobody should get free shipping to a residence. Its an ARB promotion and not up to the individual vendor and ARB is giving away business shipping only. You lucky dog!

I even asked specifically if that was the case and the guy on the phone said "uh, no, I think it's our promotion. Yeah, we ship it anywhere." I was suspicous of the * they had next to free shipping, but he said it didn't mean anything. Too bad for them, I would have just had it dropped at the loading dock at work and taken it from there. Oh well, sorry for any confusion.

I just put in the Bilsteins up front and cranked two turns on the torsion bar and she's sittin pretty again. I lost about 1/2 " from adding the ARB, and gained about 1/4" from the Bilsteins, and 1/4" from the torsion bar. Time for a test ride

i have the bulb part number somewhere- if any of you would rather hook up your arb orange lights to your factory foglight wires, to use them as an extra set of running lights as opposed to blinkers. i did this. i then took a twenty four inch long peice of steel (L shaped-1x1)bolted it to the license plate holes and installed a set of after market fog lights to that. painted the bar black. looks great. may be damaged off roading, if not careful, though!

I changed the way my plate hangs of the ARB gold frame. I'll post a pic of it on Schlud's AF forum tomorrow morning. I don't have a web page to post from. It holds the plate from the bottom holes not the top!