Or just tell them to provide instructions. I've never heard of a manufacturer not providing installation instructions for something they sell.
Hell, I provide instructions for my replacement battery and alternator cable set.

 

What a hack job. Chinese grade 5 bolts, cut the body cross support to mount a winch, no instructions, what did you pay? 800 bucks?

 

Your going to kill some one with that mounting setup. You should read up on dynamic recovery stresses. You would have thought twice about using those grade 5 bolts. I wouldn't pull you out of a hole now that I know you use grade 5 hardware. They are only good for 6k shear.

 

Someone's a little cranky.

 

lol nooo, it's a joke that came from another thread.

 

We all know all too well from whence it comes.

 

Well, Day 5. This isn't going well.

Cutting the crossmember to allow the winch to be mounted was easy and went smoothly. I did so only after looking carefully again at the structure. I'm reasonably convinced it won't be a problem.

That is, however, if it's not all for naught. The bumper has proven to be a very tight fit. So tight, in fact, that the yellow screw mounts for the forward plastic shroud had to be removed to allow the bumper to go onto the frame far enough to be bolted.

But even that wasn't enough and now it looks like the mounting holes aren't going to line up. I was able to insert one 5/16 bolt through the lower hole on each side hoping they would act as pivots while I jacked up the bumper to rotate the upper holes into position but nothing moved. At this point I am, again, stumped. I don't think I have the tools and equipment to get the bumper into the correct position, and I can't even determine just where the mount is hanging up.

 

I can't tell for sure, but it looks like the edge of the bracket, in photo TF15, is hitting a weld on the chassis. Or it could be an optical illusion.

 

Thanks Tom, but no, I just went out with a flashlight and found space there. In fact using a flashlight in the dark made it even easier to see where there is and isn't clearance. The brackets are a little wider than each of the frame horns so there is clearance on the sides. The tops are open above where the bolt holes are. The only places I can't see are the inside corners of the triangular pieces where they would butt up against the inside corners of the small frame diagonals. (Terminology is tricky here.) You can see where I mean in the first photo in this thread, labeled TF2 and the corresponding point on the frame in TF6.

I suppose I could try to take off the bumper again and relieve that area with the angle grinder but I'd really prefer to not cut into the factory finish. Plus, why should that be necessary?

It's interesting that when I was deciding which bumper to buy Justin pointed out that the Terrafirma is made by a big company, implying that TF has better engineering and equipment and implying that TF's products are therefore better than some of the other bumpers L8 sells. I'm thus far not impressed. It may be time to seriously consider returning the bumper and figuring out what Plan B is.

 

there were some pretty crappy weld on my frame horns, particularly the vertical welds. it took an little time to clean them up I had the same problem I was lucky to one bolt in each side, but after cleaning up the factory welds it slid on.