Originally posted by TheFloyd
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OK, Done it, and it was a complete doddle. If anyone else has the Genuine Toyota Alloy Bullbar on their 150 Prado, and cant find instructions, I can tell you that I had no issue fitting mine. As mentioned before, I just took a gamble and bought these http://www.marks4wd.com/rppra150.html which were way cheaper from what seem to be other identical products on the market. they arrived from interstate (free shipping) within 4 days and they took me about 30 minutes to install.
Bits that you might want to know (because i wanted to know this)...
1 - The bottom bolt points that hold on your bullbar (regardless of brand) have a thread built into the chassis. There is no nasty little nut to go fishing out when you remove the bolt. (wow i was relieved when i discovered this!)
2 - when you undo the bottom bold point of your bullbar, nothing happens! so dont worry about your BB falling on you or shifting etc...
3 - the bolts in point are bloody tight! lots of old-man noises and you will have them off though, with a big socket or ring spanner.
4 - you dont need to drill holes in anything. The RP that i bought had a few options for mounting up to three bolts per side. I used two of them, which was documented as fine to do, as the third bolt was optional or for fitting to FJ's (I think).
5 - The bolts you get with the recovery points are significantly higher rated than the ones you removed from the factory fitted bullbar, so just replace them.
6 - the bullbar comes with a big black (thick) washer on its lower mounting point. I couldnt really be sure what this is for, but I used it to pack out the back mounting of the RP, so that the RP was evenly spaced off the chassis. (the bullbar spaced it at the front and the big black washer at the back. seemed like that was the right thing to do, as the black washer was the same thickness as the BB mounting bracket.
7 - the back mounting hole is a perfect fit for the bolt. about 15cm further back on the chassis there is a rectangle hole and after a little bit of wire bending, it takes about 5 minutes to sort out your technique and slip the nut on a wire, into the chassis so you can bolt into it. (i was worried about how tricky this would be, but it was simple)
7.5 - (afterthought point) - i have seen guides where people fold the little plastic guard up out of the way and others where people were all panicked about the washer bottle on the driver side... ignore all this, there is no issue at all.
8 - loosely put the bolt through the front of the mount and the bullbar, so that you have it all lined up correctly. then it is helpful to have a second pair of hands to swing the RP up and hold it in position while you position the nut-o-wire and slip the bolt through the spring washer, the flat washer, the RP, the big-black-spacer-washery-thing, the chassis and into the waiting wire-o-nut.
9 - get it all nice and tight with a socket, then break out the torque wrench.
10 - the instructions say to tighten it to 115-165nm (if i recall correctly). I selected 145nm for no good reason. fortunately a mate of mine had a thumper of a torque wrench which could do this, but i was surprised to find that this was probably no tigher than what i could have achieved with a big socket and a bit more of that aforementioned 'old-man-noise'. in short, bloody-tight.
11 - the last thing i did was to snip off the wire tails for the rear mounting bolts, just inside the rectangle chassis holes. i bent them so that they are hovering in mid-air so that they dont rattle on anything, but left them visible so that if i even need to take these things off, i can grab them with something before i start!
I really hope that someone finds this useful. I have searched earth for a nice and clear explanation for my setup and so far i think that this is the only one.
PS, I assure you that i am in no way affiliated with marks4wd, but i am pretty happy with their product and service. Would be nice if they bothered to update their installation manual to include this information though!.
Floyd.
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