1st Gen Tacoma Aries Bull Bar Installation

Hey guys, here's how I installed my Aries Bull Bar.


I got the black bull bar with stainless steel skid plate from CarID.com for about $205 shipped.



Make sure you have everything you need: bull bar (obviously), two mounting plates (comes with bull bar), two bolts and two washers and two lock washers (also come with bull bar), socket set, impact wrench or some other way to get your bolts from the tow hook and tie down hook off. In the pic, I just have the bull bar laying on the garage floor. IF YOU DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS PUT IT ON A TOWEL OR BLANKET OR SOMETHING SOFT. Mine got some little scratches from the floor



After much difficulty, I realized I was unable to get the tow hook and tie down hook bolts off myself even with some giant wrenches. So I took it to a local shop with an impact wrench and they did it in about 5 seconds for free.
Then came the thinking part. The instructions say to only rebolt the tow hook, not the two tie downs hooks (one from each side) that also came off. When installing the mounting plate on the passenger side, the order is mounting plate, two hook, bolts. My tow hook was a little bent inwards, so the holes of the hook and the mounting plate would not line up. The bolts that come off of the driver side tie down are shorter than the bolts that come off of the passenger side tow hook, so what I did was use the short bolts from the driver side to mount the plate without the hook on the passenger side. Then I used the longer bolts from the passenger side to mount the plate and the tow hook on the driver side.

Passenger side:


Driver side:



Now that the plates are mounted, I had to get my brother to help installing the bar. He held the bar up while I bolted the bar to the plates. The order I used was washer, lock washer, bolt. It took a little working to get the bolt to go in the hole in the bull bar but it wasn't bad. Once everything was loosely bolted on, I spent a while aligning and leveling the bull bar.
All in all, it took me about two hours. Which includes going to the shop to get the bolts taken off.

Final product:


But of course then my a&m plate got covered up so I had to move that up the next day. I just blindly drilled some holes pretty much straight up from the initial license plate holes and screwed in the plate into the new holes.


I love it!! Much cheaper than a Westin, not sure how it will hold up after a while but hopefully it'll do well!

 

Nice!

 

Read your post. Just got an aries bull bar for Christmas from the wife. My install was same as yours except that I didn't swap the tow hook to driver side. Might try that but any other tips on horizontal leveling? Mine drops on the passenger side. Between Thursday and yesterday spent probably 4 hours adjusting and can't get it. I appreciate any tips. Thank you!

 

Thanks too for the tow hook tip, I flipped mine around as in the instructions. I have when same passenger side droop, maybe moving the tow hook will change this.

 

Reddirt,
Gave swapping the hook a try but it didn't make a difference. Then it was dinner time. Guess I'll tinker some more tonight or tomorrow. It's all I see when I look at my truck! Haha!