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JimmyHoops previously said:
How can any company come up with an aftermarket bumper without having a rig to test it on? This is why the ARB looks too big for the FJ...they were guessing without testing a mock-up prior to production.
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You're right Jimmy, it is hard for any company come up with an aftermarket bar without having a vehicle to test it on. However we had the good fortune of being able to work with the great folks over at Toyota Motor CO., who allowed us to get up and close with one of the original million dollar prototypes and build a computer model of the vehicles sheetmetal to design our bumper around. This is real easy to do (see an example in CAcressida's post) and is how all our bumpers are built these days.... the only exception is once the protoypte production bar was built at the factory in Australia, instead of walking out to the workshop and trial fitting it on a vehicle on their premises, we needed to ship the bar and the engineer who designed it to LA where I met up with him and we test fit the prototype bumper on one of the early preproduction model FJs (the silver FJ in the first post of this thread; that bumper is the first prototype and not exact to what is sold today).
This process is so exacting that the prototype bumper bolted right up and was almost perfect. However once on the vehicle we did see a few changes we wanted to make and once the design engineer was back in Aus, he made the changes and we have the bar that is now being sold.
It's OK that you don't like the bumper, not all designs can please all consumers, but that is the great aspect of our industry, there are many different manufacturers and there will soon be many different bumpers for you to choose from. All we ask is please don't pass on incorrect information.
