🛠️ Member Build Overtrail Updgrades
- Thread starter Bluegill
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�Member Build
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- #122
It's definitely less reflective than the white paint....that was blinding me during the day.
Motivating!!!
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- #124
I ordered this winch bumper last week:
GX550 LOW CUT FRONT WINCH BUMPER.
I'm planning on ordering this 12k winch. The price is great, it's waterproof, the solenoid is easy to relocate, it comes with a nice Hawse fairlead and hook, and it has some good online reviews. You can also "clock" the free spool switch which means you can rotate that side of the winch housing so the free spool switch is facing forward. The JW Offroad bumper has openings on the front between the aux lights and fairlead that look like it will be easy to reach the free spool switch if it's facing forward.
SCAR 12S - 12,000 lbs. Rated Synthetic Rope Winch
And of course I'll have to get some RIGID cube lights to drop in there too.
GX550 LOW CUT FRONT WINCH BUMPER.
I'm planning on ordering this 12k winch. The price is great, it's waterproof, the solenoid is easy to relocate, it comes with a nice Hawse fairlead and hook, and it has some good online reviews. You can also "clock" the free spool switch which means you can rotate that side of the winch housing so the free spool switch is facing forward. The JW Offroad bumper has openings on the front between the aux lights and fairlead that look like it will be easy to reach the free spool switch if it's facing forward.
SCAR 12S - 12,000 lbs. Rated Synthetic Rope Winch
And of course I'll have to get some RIGID cube lights to drop in there too.
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- #125
The owner and fabricator at JW Offroad emailed me. My bumper should be shipping out next week or shortly thereafter. He changed his design a bit in response to comments received by some of us interested parties. The bumper now has bolt-on wings to make shipping a lot less of a hassle and a lot cheaper, probably by at least a couple hundred bucks, if not more. Shipping to my door should now be $100 or less.
He has some nice CAD drawings up on his site with the new design:
GX550 LOW CUT FRONT WINCH BUMPER.
My last bumper was the bolt-on-wing design and it was plenty strong even though it wasn't nearly as beefy or reinforced as JW's design. I'm looking forward to getting this installed.
I ordered the OVS SCAR 12k winch and it should be here next week too. Thinking of trying some PIAA 3" cube lights to mount in the bumper. I've used Hellas, Baja Designs, and Rigids and they are all good. I actually have a pair of old incandescent Hella Rallye 4000 lights from my 2004 Land Rover that I'd love to mount for that old school vibe, but there's not a horizontal shelf surface on which to mount the Hellas.
He has some nice CAD drawings up on his site with the new design:
GX550 LOW CUT FRONT WINCH BUMPER.
My last bumper was the bolt-on-wing design and it was plenty strong even though it wasn't nearly as beefy or reinforced as JW's design. I'm looking forward to getting this installed.
I ordered the OVS SCAR 12k winch and it should be here next week too. Thinking of trying some PIAA 3" cube lights to mount in the bumper. I've used Hellas, Baja Designs, and Rigids and they are all good. I actually have a pair of old incandescent Hella Rallye 4000 lights from my 2004 Land Rover that I'd love to mount for that old school vibe, but there's not a horizontal shelf surface on which to mount the Hellas.
Looks great!
Seems like a logical solution to keeping shipping costs down and the connections seem pretty beefy. When you spoke to the JW folks, did you ask about a possible solution to cover up/protect the areas in front of the front tires, like Victory's bumper seems to do? This is the one thing that is giving me some pause on this bumper. For looks and for function. Wil be curious to see what you think about this aspect once yours is installed.
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- #128
At this point I don't know what happens with the cut inner fender liner in the front fender area. I've dealt with this issue on other trucks and usually you can cut the liner to be out of the way and out of view but it still catches much and water flinging forward. I'll have to see how it all works out. If there's a big gap I'll just get a sheet of thin rubber or plastic and work out fastening a section between the inner fender liner and the bumper. A few little rivets should suffice.
You did a great job with these mods. Looks great! I had a random question. You mentioned the spare. Did you figure out how large a tire you can fit up in the stock underbody spare bay?
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- #131
I don't know, haven't really thought about it. But I will measure before & after. I haven't had any issues yet scraping the front plastic offroad and my main goal with the new bumper is simply to house a winch. It's great to improve the approach angle but you can't forget the fact that you have to drag the stock rear bumper over whatever you manage to approach.
I also have a moon roof but I installed all cross bars and they do not obstruct the moon roof. I just found that it gave the rack more stability Milage with the rack, lift wheels and tires averages a little better than 15 MPG without taking into consideration the larger tire. It’s around 18 highway and anywhere from 10 to 14 city I live on the coast with a lot of hills
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- #135
I'm averaging just over 14 mpg with about 7600 miles on the truck.
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- #136
I should have my JW Offroad bumper shortly after I return from Mexico next week. Shipping was delayed a bit and of course he was ready to ship it the day I was leaving for a family vacation! The winch is ready to go so I'll see if I can find time next weekend to install the bumper...although I have an offroad camping trip loosely planned for next weekend, so the bumper may have to wait until the week after.
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- #137
Still waiting on the JW Offroad bumper.....
Had a chance to test out the new 180-degree awning from Overland Vehicle Systems (OVS). Here's a link:
HD Nomadic 180 Degree Awning - Dark Grey with Black Travel Cover Universal
I had a great setup with my Ironman 4x4 awning (see my previous posts on this thread: LINK ) but I decided that the Ironman awning was too difficult to setup and take down. It takes 2 people and it's really awkward and difficult. This new OVS awning is easy for 1 person to setup and almost as easy for 1 person to pack away.
Since I don't want to leave this giant dorky awning on the side of my truck all the time, I had to make my own mounting brackets. I used the cool quick-connect brackets from Ironman 4x4 that I used with the Ironman awning (again, see previous photos). But this awning is much bigger and heavier at about 47 lbs vs. the 25 lb Ironman awning so I think I will purchase 2 more quick-connect Ironman mounting brackets. I'm afraid that 2 won't be strong enough so I'll add 2 more. For this test trip I used the 2 quick-connects and also bolted on one of the metal brackets that came with the OVS awning as backup.
I can also see that I can safely drop down the mounting position a good 1.5 inches before I have to worry about the awning cover rubbing on the truck paint along the roof line above the doors. This will be good because the top of the packed awning is now at about 84-84.5 inches while my garage opening is about 83.5 inches. The awning will also look a bit less dorky up there if it's down an inch or so.
Overall I'm very pleased with this awning. It provides a lot of great coverage along the side of the truck. Easy to set up - just unzip the cover, pull out the fabric and let it drop, then walk out the rear portion, walk out the front portion, strap it back to the roof rack to provide tension. The awning will stand open on it's own but they recommend using the poles as well. The two central poles are permanently attached and held, folded-up against the central aluminum rafters with velcro straps. The 2 outer support poles come in a separate little pole bag. They also include a ton of ropes to tie down the awning in high winds.
Here are the quick-connect Ironman brackets with my metal pieces I made (the gray-painted pieces) to adjust the mounting position on the back of the awning. I'll have to think up a way to make new brackets so the awing can be mounted 1.5 inches lower...I'll also make 2 more mounting points for the awning:
Here is the awning mounted up in the garage - you can see the smaller Ironman awning hanging above. I had to remove the new awning to get out of the garage - it's just about a half-inch too high right now.
Here is the awning being set up ("deployed" if you are a secret agent man), you can see that it supports itself just fine:
Here it is with the poles in place and being enjoyed for the night and the next morning:
Had a chance to test out the new 180-degree awning from Overland Vehicle Systems (OVS). Here's a link:
HD Nomadic 180 Degree Awning - Dark Grey with Black Travel Cover Universal
I had a great setup with my Ironman 4x4 awning (see my previous posts on this thread: LINK ) but I decided that the Ironman awning was too difficult to setup and take down. It takes 2 people and it's really awkward and difficult. This new OVS awning is easy for 1 person to setup and almost as easy for 1 person to pack away.
Since I don't want to leave this giant dorky awning on the side of my truck all the time, I had to make my own mounting brackets. I used the cool quick-connect brackets from Ironman 4x4 that I used with the Ironman awning (again, see previous photos). But this awning is much bigger and heavier at about 47 lbs vs. the 25 lb Ironman awning so I think I will purchase 2 more quick-connect Ironman mounting brackets. I'm afraid that 2 won't be strong enough so I'll add 2 more. For this test trip I used the 2 quick-connects and also bolted on one of the metal brackets that came with the OVS awning as backup.
I can also see that I can safely drop down the mounting position a good 1.5 inches before I have to worry about the awning cover rubbing on the truck paint along the roof line above the doors. This will be good because the top of the packed awning is now at about 84-84.5 inches while my garage opening is about 83.5 inches. The awning will also look a bit less dorky up there if it's down an inch or so.
Overall I'm very pleased with this awning. It provides a lot of great coverage along the side of the truck. Easy to set up - just unzip the cover, pull out the fabric and let it drop, then walk out the rear portion, walk out the front portion, strap it back to the roof rack to provide tension. The awning will stand open on it's own but they recommend using the poles as well. The two central poles are permanently attached and held, folded-up against the central aluminum rafters with velcro straps. The 2 outer support poles come in a separate little pole bag. They also include a ton of ropes to tie down the awning in high winds.
Here are the quick-connect Ironman brackets with my metal pieces I made (the gray-painted pieces) to adjust the mounting position on the back of the awning. I'll have to think up a way to make new brackets so the awing can be mounted 1.5 inches lower...I'll also make 2 more mounting points for the awning:
Here is the awning mounted up in the garage - you can see the smaller Ironman awning hanging above. I had to remove the new awning to get out of the garage - it's just about a half-inch too high right now.
Here is the awning being set up ("deployed" if you are a secret agent man), you can see that it supports itself just fine:
Here it is with the poles in place and being enjoyed for the night and the next morning:
How did those mounts work out for you after some off-road abuse how does it secure it's self to the westcott rack? This is something we want to do for certain occasions but definitely don't want to keep it on all the time! We will be most likely running a Roam Adventure awning.
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- #139
check out the LINK in my post above
I simply bolted the female halves of the quick-connect mounts to the side of the Westcott rack.
I'm planning on using 2 more of these quick-connect mounts so each mount will then be responsible for holding about 14 lbs of awning (I just checked OVS' website and it says this awning is 55 lbs). I figure 4 should do it. I do worry about miles on washboard roads though - at some point plastic cracks!
I simply bolted the female halves of the quick-connect mounts to the side of the Westcott rack.
I'm planning on using 2 more of these quick-connect mounts so each mount will then be responsible for holding about 14 lbs of awning (I just checked OVS' website and it says this awning is 55 lbs). I figure 4 should do it. I do worry about miles on washboard roads though - at some point plastic cracks!
I emailed JW Off-road recently and they said this most recent batch is due back from powder coating imminently. "You'll definitely have it before Christmas," is what I was told so 
!
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