ICI Magnum Front Bumper Replacement

Well after lurking and commenting on everyone else's threads for the better part of a year I figure it is finally time to start one of my own.

All this time I thought a cow was going to kick in my bumper and it ended up being my own ******** working in the pasture without my glasses on and driving into a drainage ditch. It bent the driver side back far enough that it hit the tire when I turned. Sorry I didn't take a picture before I applied some red neck body work, but (2) 2,000 lbs ratchet straps connected to the back of the dump truck popped it back out to almost normal again. You can still see that the side is pushed in and there is a bump above the tow hook. Luckily my truck is pretty dirty all the time (camouflage?) so its harder to notice the scratches under the fog light. Anyway long story short a new front bumper got moved way up the priority list. Additionally, since a lot of the property looks like this a few more degrees on the approach angle is probably a good idea.

I was planning on a Fusion bumper as I love the lines and the way they fit close to the truck but after my encounter with the ditch I decided that a little more offroad capability is probably a good plan. I looked around again and as you have probably guessed from the title the Magnum RT Series Bumper kept growing on me. I liked that there weren't a bunch of additional bends and that it had extra vents for the inter cooler. And lastly something that was a little higher and tighter but still could push a cow when needed (they just weren't at fault for the last one but there is always next time....).

The magnum website was pretty easy to use but the bumpers shown in the pictures didn't match up with the options selected when you put in the year/make/model info so I called to see if they had a picture of the bumper for our trucks and to ask whether or not they came with shackle tabs or tow hooks as I didn't want to lose a front recovery point (see ditch encounter post 1). I got an interesting response that basically said the crumple zone on the 1500... well crumples... and that poor winching technique could pull the bumper hard enough to begin said crumpling. I haven't seen it first hand but I spent enough time rock crawling in my JK that it seems plausible a 16,000 lbs capacity winch, a 6,000 lbs truck, an immovable object, and a driver on his 84th oz of beer could make this happen.

Anyway I was still hesitant to lose the front recovery point (although I may have a plan there) and many of you are probably tired of hearing about my 2.5 mile dirt and rock (mostly rock, not gravel) driveway which brought me to the next issue. They only powder coat in black and black doesn't really exist by the time you get to my house. I asked if I could get in bare steel and wondered aloud about the cost of powder coating when they sweetened the deal with a discount if I would share pictures with them for social media etc after I got it installed. I just may have as many pictures of my truck as I do of my kiddo so that was an easy one and I decided to go for it. Rafael, the regional sales manager (presumably for CA) told me that they powder coat all of them after fabrication so they will have to start a new one from scratch to send to me and that it might take longer. I responded that is fine it gives me time to line up the powder coating. That was Wednesday June 22nd a week later on the 29th it shows up at my office in a custom built crate 2 pallets long by 1 wide.

I dropped it at the powder coating shop that day (which takes us to the present as they are still waiting on the clear coat to arrive) but I should all ready for the install this weekend. I have 4 cut outs for LED pods so away go the OEM fog lights and it has cutouts for the parking sensors which I really wanted to retain.

I have 2 first impressions from a quick inspection. First the welds are very clean (and you can see a lot when it is bare metal) and secondly the body steel is solid without being overly heavy (2 of us were able to easily lift it out of the truck on the over sized pallet) with reinforcement well located in the back to provide additional stiffness.

Looking down the barrel of a good mod always makes the week take a month pass so please chime in with questions or comments.

I dont think that bumper will give you the clearance that you're wanting. Hopefully it does work out..

But a lift would have been more of a benefit imo.

For true clearance and a winch.. The add bumper is the best of both worlds.. Plus an exrta $1500 though.

AustinB said:

I dont think that bumper will give you the clearance that you're wanting. Hopefully it does work out..

But a lift would have been more of a benefit imo.

For true clearance and a winch.. The add bumper is the best of both worlds.. Plus an exrta $1500 though.

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Yeah the ADD is nice but they don't make a winch mount for the EcoDiesel. They also don't strike me as good for ranch environments. I may be able to pick it up today so I'll measure the drop for comparison.

While a lift is good for the low speed stuff like in the picture they are generally a negative impact on high speed capability. I'm in 4hi going over 40 mph on dirt twice a day every day so I don't think a lift is ever in my future.

Bumper looks nice, I have been looking at one of them with the parking sensor cut outs

Congrats, hope it works out well for you

Mauzz said:

While a lift is good for the low speed stuff like in the picture they are generally a negative impact on high speed capability. I'm in 4hi going over 40 mph on dirt twice a day every day so I don't think a lift is ever in my future.

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I see where you're trying to go with that.. But I'm confident that you'd hardly notice a difference, other than being a little taller.

Witch said:

Bumper looks nice, I have been looking at one of them with the parking sensor cut outs

Congrats, hope it works out well for you

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Thanks man, I'm headed out to the powder coater today to pick it up so I'm excited to see what it looks like now!

Just picked up the bumper from powder coating yesterday and got it unloaded in the shop. I'm planning on doing the install tomorrow morning! I wouldn't typically call a bumper swap an install seeing as it's all of 8 bolts but since we have to take the front of the truck off and I'm adjusting the suspension we'll see how it goes!

Looks good. Looking forward to seeing it mounted up!

Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk

That looks sharp.

Alright! Well I finally got around to mounting yesterday and I am pretty pleased with the result (though I suspect everyone likes the mod they just did so no shock there). I apologize I just have finished pictures but I'll try and give a brief run down on the installation process (and lets be honest that's what everyone is here for anyway).

We started off with the intent to tighten down the coilovers. After about 15 minutes we realized that was simply not happening with the shocks installed so I decided to fight that battle another day after we get the shop cleared out enough to use the lift. We went ahead and pulled off the other front tire to give us a little extra room to work with for the bumpers and adjusted course.

The hardest part was getting the stock bumper off between removing the grill, and the headlights, and then disconnecting the foglights, the parking sensors, the little screws holding the front valance to the fender. Then comes the tow hooks and the mountain of plastic to support the upper valance.

After everything is off you reinstall the headlights and grill to align the bumper. Setting the bumper up on the truck is definitely a 2 person job. Once we had the bumper on we put a floor jack under each bracket so we could raise the 2 sides independently. The ICI kit includes (4) 1/8" shims and (4) 1/4" shims for adjustments if necessary. While I don't love the idea of shims they are very solid and powder coated so I don't think it will be an issue. We ended up using a 1/8 inch shim on the bottom bracket to rock the bumper back a little and got it dialed in pretty well on the second attempt. All together it took us about 3 hours.

So without further ado here are the installed shots from when I got home.

One of the things I really like is that the bumper doesn't stick way out past the front of the truck. Here is a before and after profile shot.

Looks great! I also have the front and rear bumpers and they are fantastic

Suspension ****, post #14! Looks good man! Did you lose much lift with the weight of the bumper? I was wondering if you were going to adjust them up a bit, glad to see you thought about it.

Im excited to see the new bumper in the same pic that started it all.

Is there a big difference?

PassivAggressor said:

Suspension ****, post #14! Looks good man! Did you lose much lift with the weight of the bumper? I was wondering if you were going to adjust them up a bit, glad to see you thought about it.

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So I took before and after measurements on the front (and rear) wheel well and they did not change at all. I'm still sitting right at 38" FD and 38 1/2" FP. I'm planning on tightening them down to bring the front up another 3/4 to 1" inch. This job requires completely uninstalling the coil over tho so its going to be a few weeks.

Im excited to see the new bumper in the same pic that started it all.

Is there a big difference?

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I'm definitely getting up on that hill again this weekend! I took the following measurements relative to ground clearance

Before
Ground to Bottom of Air Dam 10 3/8"
Ground to Bottom of Metal Bumper 16"

After
Ground to Bottom of ICI Bumper 15"

Which looks like I technically lost some approach angle over laying the metal on the ground. There are 2 significant differences though. First the shape of the bumper places the lowest point farther toward the back so it is closer to the tires. Second, the cut of the bumper in front of the inside tread line of the tires is 19 1/2" above the ground. So as long as I can get a tire on it I should have a little more capability than I did.


Now I'm just waiting on the lights to come in!

I love my magnum bumper

Not my cup of tea, but it looks nice.