Coastal Offroad High Clearance Front Bumper Guide

Hey guys, I recently finished fabbing up my bumper from Coastal Offroad and thought I would do a quick guide going over my experience and what to expect when embarking on a project like this.

My main goal for this thread is to detail how my bumper went together to the best of my ability. From my research there is no real guide on how to build something like this beside the other threads about Coastal armor or some youtube videos, but nothing specific to the 2nd gen taco. This was my first welding project and I would highly recommend anyone who is on the fence to go for it and build one.

A little backstory of my thought process going into the project: The bumper I was considering was the C4 Overland bumper but when I saw that the lead times were over 14 weeks and that my Coastal kit would be delivered within 1 week, I thought why not learn something cool and build it myself.

My equipment was a Hobart Handler 150 welder. I just welded out of my garage and blew the breaker at least 50 times LOL. It took me a little over 2 weeks from start to finish to weld, sand, grind, and get it painted. The whole project cost me about $1000 including the cost of the bumper, shipping, paint, sanding disks, grinding wheels, acetone, misc. others. Overall I am very happy with how it turned out even though I burned myself out by working long days and staying up late during school nights and just doing pieces here and there after work. My advice to anyone is to know what they are getting into and to take your time; I estimate the total time I spent to be greater than 50 hours total throughout 2 weeks. The welding was completed rather quickly but the grinding and sanding to get a finish I was happy with took for-ev-er and really was a pain. Some of my welds on the main outer seams looked pretty bad, and the grinder and paint makes me the welder I ain't.
The paint took me a few days because I decided that I wanted to skip having a professional powdercoat done and just use Rustoleum Professional spray paint. The finish has held up so far but the appearance is less than desired and I think paying a little extra for the powdercoat would have been worth it.

Nevertheless, here is how it looks all finished:


Now onto the actual build of the bumper:

First step was taking delivery of the bumper. Everything came lightning fast in 2 days all the way from Canada to Texas. All parts were packaged really well too, but pretty darn heavy as was expected.



That night I laid all the parts on the garage floor and flipped through the instruction booklet included and got a feel for the general idea of how the project was going to go. I made sure to number all the plates just like the instructions say to, this really helped when grabbing the next plates for each step. (I didn't take a picture of this, I just followed the instructions and image they provided.) The whole process is pretty intuitive, but I took my time and was very careful with lining everything up and getting the fitments right.

The next morning I got to work removing the stock bumper, grill, headlight trims, and front cross member.



Cross member removed:


The next step was to start welding!! This was my first welding project of this size so it was definitely something new to me, but it all went together easy enough. Here I am welding up the back plate and side triangle plates. I just tacked everything together and held it all in place with some clamps as shown and used weights and some scrap 4x4s to use as a makeshift platform. (Side note: Be sure to not be like me and wear long sleeves!! This was my first welding project and the welding burns roasted my arms which sucked bad for about a week )



Here is this stage of the bumper mounted up:


Adding some tacks to the winch mount plate:
(I can feel the arm burns just looking at this photo... )


Next I tacked the front plate onto this setup. From this point I was really happy with how it was all going together and what it would look like! It took me a full day to get to this point but I was getting the welder set up and I struggled with getting a good position to weld in and creating good ways to create a solid platform to weld on so the metal wasn't resting on the ground. Getting these plates to be perfect was crucial because this is the base of the bumper, the wings go together easily from here but I really focused on getting these main plates perfect. From this point the build was very straight forward; the instructions do a nice job of preparing everything and are very easy to follow.


Here's a pic of one of the main seams between the side triangles and back mounting plate:


From this point I began tacking up the side arms of the bumper. Again the fitment of all the plates is really nice, all the lines fit pretty well together


Here's one bottom side wing plate with the light mount welded on:


Here's the bumper all tacked up on the truck:

(One thing I wished I did was to give the bar a little angle outward just to make it look a little more aggressive.)

After this the next big part was welding it all together. The tacks are strong enough to hold the bumper together and move it around while welding it, but I drove the truck with half a face to school for about 2 weeks.

After pulling it off the truck I started doing small beads on the inside as directed, with larger full beads on the outside seams
Again with short sleeves


Here's the bumper all welded up (Don't hate on the welds too hard, this was my first time and I fixed all these with the grinder and paint )





From here the next big step was to grind off all the ugly weld beads and make it look like the C4 bumper in terms of look and finish. This step took me a while because I wanted a really nice uniform and smooth finish all around, and smoothing all the main seams took some time to get them to a spot I was happy with.

I also spent a lot of time going over the main wings with a belt sander because the welds were so deep and my grinding made some deep pits that I had to smooth out all of those bumps


The grinding and sanding stage took me about a week to finish. I had a lot to fix to get the bumper to be at a state where I was happy with the appearance and the extra work and time I spent getting the finish I wanted was absolutely worth it.

Finally I was ready to paint. I took some time getting all of the little welding bumps and other debris and surface crap off with some acetone and a wire brush and then started to hit it with some primer. I used Rustoleum Professional gray primer and flat black spray paint which I got from Home Depot, I spent about $60 and went through 2 cans of primer and 3 and a half cans of paint.

This stage of the project I recommend waiting for and having the bumper powdercoated. I felt that I didn't want to spend another week and a half without a front bumper on my truck so I just spray painted it, but I really think the powdercoat would have been well worth the extra money for the look and finish.

Here's the bumper all primed up:


I did about 3 - 4 light coats and then a couple heavier coats of primer just to make sure I had a solid layer to protect from rust or chipping and then got to putting the black on. From here I just did some more coats until the paint looked good enough, and then let the bumper sit for a couple of days to let the paint really cure and dry.

Here is the completed and painted bumper on my truck with the Baja fog lights:



And that's it for the project!! I didn't take a picture of them but I also ordered the C4 front support brackets and painted those, I wanted the extra piece of mind because the bumper is pretty heavy (around 100 lbs. or so) and I wanted a little more support because the factory mount is only 3 bolts per side. (I will update with a picture of these soon, they mount under the front sway bar and go through the frame. I also had cut some of the back plate of the bumper off to fit the brackets because they were not designed with this bumper.)



Throughout this project I learned a lot and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun and pretty cool how everyone reacts when they learn that I built it 100% myself.

Please let me know if you have any questions and if this clarifies or helps anyone who was unsure about getting started!

 

why didn't you get the extreme clearance version

 

Good job! Came out real nice!

 

Thanks!!

 

I personally like the look of the regular bumper which is already higher clearance than most other popular offerings from other companies and I like the longer front skidplate on the regular version. Give the truck more of the look I was after

 

Looks good. Love mine.

 

came out solid! good looking build, been debating on taking on this exact bumper myself