Hi Bryce,
I have been looking at your fit up and the main bar support brackets are predrilled to suit the Prado chassis, and no doubt would be manufactured to a pattern or jig drilled so should be OK.
The bar fits, the gap from top off bar to guard looks close to the other guys so no major stuff ups.
You now have two new cover plates which you have fitted up and still have the gap from the bottom tab of the cover to the mounting brackets .
Have you tried unbolting the top coverplate to bar bolts, fitting the lower (problem) bolt loose then fitting top bolts and pull up the cover plate.
Just a thought which might help, but dont distort any panels to excess so powder coating fails Aye
07 Upgrade GXL D4D, Manual, Dune,Sov Bar, BFG's, SG11, Redark dual Batts, Extensive Aux wiring, Stebel, LED stop tails, IPF HID's (my mod), 240V Inv, ARB Comp, GME UHF,TPMS, Safari snorkel, GPS,Hilux washers, 40l Engel in 30% pas pos,homemade A/C cond protection plate, polyairs.
Yep clifton, tried that.
The gap is too big and there is no way I can close it up. I sent a long email to ARB HQ today and will wait and see if they reply.
[b]2005 GXL[/b] With most of the fruit!
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Well guys the bar is on and let me tell you that its not the easiest of tasks.
Pics to follow, however in my eagerness to get the thing on the car and a few other time restraints i didn't get around to taking many photo's...
But i will throw up the ones i did take in the next day or so.
Firstly I would like to point out that this is definitely a job for about three blokes or suitably handy ladies.
At the start of the job.
Surprisingly one of the hardest parts of the job was removing the bumper bar. The sides of the bumper are held on by these black mounting clips. To remove the bar from the clips a nice steady pressure pulling away from the car is required or you will break the clips. Not a big deal if you aren't thinking of removing the bar to put the original one on but if you are, a bit of patience here will pay dividends.
Front bar and reinforcing bar off. The bar mounting bracket mounts attach to either side of the chassis adding further support and strength by adding four more fastening points and having three points of attachment for the brackets, two at the front and one further down the chassis rails accessed via a captive nut assy slid down the chassis rails and bolted into place. You can see the Bull bars reinforcing and mount sitting under the front of the vehicle.
A close ish... shot of the mounting brackets.
Bar reinforcing and mounting bracket all bolted into place. There are lots of elongated holes in this bracket and it looks like it would be a pain in the bum but once its up and the bolts are in its centered and it doesnt move.
The next part was rather difficult to take photos of as it was all hands on deck for holding the bar into position and getting the bolts tight. The bar is held onto the bracket via 6 M10 bolts and captive nuts, in the process of getting the bar to sit right we ended up killing a few of the bolts and captive nuts. I have since replaced them with hi-tensile bolts and nuts.
It has a further mounting point lower in the up right that has to be drilled using a hole in the mounting bracket as a guide. We found that drilling this hole before the 6 bolts at the front were properly tight was the only way we were going to get it to sit at 25mm around the sides.
The bash plates and side guards went on easy except for the passenger side which required a some field modifications to get it to fit neat. The 4" grinder was my friend here.
As for the light inserts and wiring, after disconnecting the wiring harness from the park and indicators as well as removing the globes the final wiring harness can be removed from the vehicle with a bit of gentle persuasion... and from there splicing in the wiring is rather simple.
AND NOW A SAFETY ANNOUNCEMENT The wiring harness supplied by ARB with the bar has the same colour wiring thats is on the vehicles park and indicator harness, however they have botched it and got the colours ass about. So it will pay to double check this before wiring in the lights.
And all finished except for the light brackets and covers which fit up with three bolts in the covers that protrude through the bracket and fastened with some M6 flange nuts.
Nice looking bar Damo 8)
Good write up also. Now all you have to do is fill in that empty spot near ya number plate......... exit stage right before your minister of finance sends me a virus !!!!! :lol: :lol: :lol:
LES
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I'm guessing that the whole weekend was spent with the bar, the suspension - and I'm just fishing around the other posts to see what else you put in ..... :lol:
It was a nice little thing to achieve considering this was the biggest DIY project i have ever undertaken. So i was a little nervous on undertaking the project. If i had all the gear to work on the car i would have saved around $700 on installation costs.
I spent around $300 on bits and pieces to make things easier on myself. However i am of the opinion that if i saved $100 i was doing fine :lol:
Les, the winch is on the list of things for next year along with lockers i would say. I have a Tirfor so thats will have to do with the winching for now...
Now all i have to do is get a spare arvo to get it dirty.
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