Custom Front & Rear Bumper with Spare Tire & Gas Cans

[chnlisle]

Guys, that deRosa was my first good bike. I had been doing the Rose Bowl ride for a year on a UniVega and could hang for about 90% of it so I thought I'd treat myself to a great bike. Holy $h#t what a difference. The Klein is stil a nice bike but not the art that an italian steely is. Of course even the italians are going to carbon. A new Pinny or Nago is upwards of 5K. Pam's brother has a new Orbea. Very nice and very light but I'd rather spend the dough on a trip to The Tour.

 

[Phird05]

Wouldn't it be awesome to follow the tour in a camper and experience that first hand. I have some freinds who have done that and rave about it while we are sitting in the sun throwing a few back, and we get to talking about racing, (in our advancing years). It is on my to do list for sure, but as I am a single full time dad, I may have to wait until my daughter is off to college before I could commit the kind of time. Anyway, it's fun to think about.

 

[chnlisle]

We are hoping to do just that next year. 3 couples in a french motor home. It's a long way off but keepingmy fingers crossed.

 

[Simpleman (shanz3n5)]

Id like to hear more from others that have these bumpers. the pros and the cons. i am thinking about visiting the company and any feed back from existing owners of Alumineess or similar bumper with swing aways would be great
thanx
shanz3n5

 

[craig333]

Well my front bumper is the only flat surface I have to set a beer on. Also great to stand on when you work under the hood. Aluminess makes a great product just don't expect much from their customer service.

 

[Simpleman (shanz3n5)]

thank you for the reply. can you attach a few pics
thanx
ps whats been the issue with customer service

 

[craig333]

They're uncommunicative. Took over six weeks for mine and it was like pulling teeth to find out when it was going to ship. Took my down payment and never sent an acknowledgement. When the gap was wider than the instructions said they were "oh yeah, thats the way it is, the instructions are wrong". When the brackets had the nuts welded on the wrong side they took their time getting a new set out never did acknowledge they'd made an error. Now all that said its solidly built. I pity the deer that jumps out in front of me.

 

[Simpleman (shanz3n5)]

thats great to know.
of coarse money is money. we have it to spend or we dont. im always riding that line. sooooo....when i do pay i expect it to be as promised for the money. i cant stand that kind of customer service, attitude buys a lot.
i am sending a fab welder buddy of mine the links to the product. to get a worth value. i wish he had the time to do it.
kenny/denny said they dont have a rear on web cuz they dont sell enough for the chevy pick up. market it to the chevy owners and they will have the market. so it will cost me more then listed price at 65 per hour to fab one or modify a similar one. they seem to be the only company around making the rear with the split gates. so im sure thats where some of the attitude comes from. i just hope they know that they have a great product, at bit steep in price, but there is always someone out there willing to take their market.
your front looks awesome. what else do u have going on with that camper/truck set up.

again thanks
john

 

[Simpleman (shanz3n5)]

pretty great camping pics. ill have to get some up soon.

 

[craig333]

Rear is stock. I was going to go with a Reunel bumper on the rear but they never responded to multiple emails. Now I can't afford it atm.

 

[Bwht4x4]

Not to hijack this thread, but I run a TireGate HG on my truck. It holds a spare and two 6 gallon cans of whatever you want to carry. It goes into the trailer receiver and works quite well. The only issue I could see for some trucks is the weight of the camper and then this on the far back could be a lot. If you have a 3/4 ton it shouldn't be an issue at all. I'm in the process of having a hawk built and I'll likely use the TireGate to carry 12 more gallons of water in addition to what the Hawk's water tanks holds. That should last us quite a while.

http://www.tiregate.com/hg-series/

I can take picts of my set up if anyone is interested.

 

[Simpleman (shanz3n5)]

pics would be great
thanx

 

[Bwht4x4]

I'll post them once I have them uploaded somewhere else. Kind of annoying to upload them somewhere else and then put the URL here.

Maybe I'm doing it wrong.

 

[Simpleman (shanz3n5)]

i know. the few pics i have up i had to email to self and save in the downloads. import from the downloads. im using a mac. almost done with a interior mod that i will post pics of. just added a porta potty and cabinet but had to remove old existing first. easy if i would have just built and installed. but i started working with existing un-true and not straight angles of stuff that was there. haha my good sense told me to tear out and start over. my "make it right /fix it sense couldnt leave it alone haha

 

[Bwht4x4]

Here's a few picts of my TireGate HG on my old truck. In these picts the spare tire is on there, but the two fuel cans are not. The picts are small so if anyone wants hi-res picts please PM your email address.

Like I said, having the truck loaded with a camper and the tiregate fully loaded with a spare and two full cans might be too much for a a half ton (w/o air bags) and likely too much for a Taco.

I'm ordering a new FWC Hawk for another truck and hope the tiregate I have still fits with the camper installed. I'm sure it will. With the camper and the tiregate it's going to make a perfect hunting rig for me.

 

[wspohn]

We recently had a custom rear bumper, fuel locker, gear box etc made and installed by Aluminess in Santee. Very pleased with the finished product as well as the people at Aluminess. We did find out that we could have ordered the Aluminess products from Whitefeather Conversions in Red Bluff and had them installed there as well (whitefeather@snowcrest.net). Would have been much more convenient since we live in Redding.

 

[Happyjax]

Looks really nice!

 

[snuffy]

i really like that setup, how do you keep your rig so clean?