Skandocious
Post Whores Make Me Sick
Got a crooked bumper like mine? You CAN fix it! Here are a few tips on what you can do to remedy the crooked bumpers that plague these trucks.
(Note: all of the images are clickable thumbnails, so click them to get a larger view)
Here's what I started with:
Here's how to fix it
First remove the 4 bolts which attach the bumper to the frame brackets:
See the bent bracket, it supposed to be straight as an arrow:
You won't be able to straighten these brackets on the bumper while they're attached, you can't get enough leverage because they're VERY strong. Alternatively, you can remove them (they bolt onto the bumper), but you'll need some heavy duty stuff to straighten them back out, which I didn't have at hand. So I decided to bend the brackets on the truck's frame in the opposite direction so the angles would counter each other. Here's the bracket I'm talking about:
I used a pipe wrench for most of it because I was able to get a right-angle on it, with a bit long handle. Then I used a crescent wrench for when I want to get it straight on, no right-angle:
You can see my feeble attempts at bending the bracket... It worked OKAY but I couldn't really bend the WHOLE bracket, could only get enough bite on it to bend the ends, as you can see:
This actually straightened out my passenger side very well (it wasn't as bent as the driver side), but I wasn't quite enough for the driver side. So I chose to take it back off and space the driver side with washers. The only washers I had were a bit too small so I drilled them out with a 1/2" bit and they worked just fine. So 1/2" inner-diameter washers should work fine.
With my amount of angle on the bumper, I used 3 washers:
So that did the trick! Both sides are now nice and level with the rest of the truck, but the washers on the driver side pushed it up a little higher than the passenger side, so I loosened the bolts on the passenger side and slid the bolts down a little bit in their elongated holes. Worked beautifully, here's the end result:
Credit for the washer idea goes to lost Larry, thanks brother
(Note: all of the images are clickable thumbnails, so click them to get a larger view)
Here's what I started with:
Here's how to fix it
First remove the 4 bolts which attach the bumper to the frame brackets:
See the bent bracket, it supposed to be straight as an arrow:
You won't be able to straighten these brackets on the bumper while they're attached, you can't get enough leverage because they're VERY strong. Alternatively, you can remove them (they bolt onto the bumper), but you'll need some heavy duty stuff to straighten them back out, which I didn't have at hand. So I decided to bend the brackets on the truck's frame in the opposite direction so the angles would counter each other. Here's the bracket I'm talking about:
I used a pipe wrench for most of it because I was able to get a right-angle on it, with a bit long handle. Then I used a crescent wrench for when I want to get it straight on, no right-angle:
You can see my feeble attempts at bending the bracket... It worked OKAY but I couldn't really bend the WHOLE bracket, could only get enough bite on it to bend the ends, as you can see:
This actually straightened out my passenger side very well (it wasn't as bent as the driver side), but I wasn't quite enough for the driver side. So I chose to take it back off and space the driver side with washers. The only washers I had were a bit too small so I drilled them out with a 1/2" bit and they worked just fine. So 1/2" inner-diameter washers should work fine.
With my amount of angle on the bumper, I used 3 washers:
So that did the trick! Both sides are now nice and level with the rest of the truck, but the washers on the driver side pushed it up a little higher than the passenger side, so I loosened the bolts on the passenger side and slid the bolts down a little bit in their elongated holes. Worked beautifully, here's the end result:
Credit for the washer idea goes to lost Larry, thanks brother
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