Hummer4life, do you have a level kit or is the boat lifting your front up for you, it looks good

 

I'm not much on chrome either, in fact I've already switched everything that was chrome for black except the grill, I'm thinking of painting it myself, or having it painted, my thing it do I paint it to match the truck Boulder Grey, or to match the bumper, which isn't really black, it's more of a dark dark grey, on a black Hummer the matching grill looks great, on the red hummer though it looks a little too much like a Jeep, (sorry if you own all red, my sister-in-law owned an all red jeep for about 100 years) I don't want to go with a black grill though, I think more the color of the bumper, that super dark grey, or the color of the hood vent, which was black but like plastic does, it quickly faded to that dark grey. any thoughts, BTW its nice to see other non-chrome people out there, I was writing about eBay deals on another post of mine, when I bough my H3 it had chrome running boards, I got a set of Black running boards, without brackets on eBay they cost me $19.99 that was the good part, shipping was $60.00 so for $80.00 I got my black running boards, the seller wouldn't tell me if they would bolt up, later he said if my chrome running boards were oem he knew they would bolt up, but he couldn't tell me that, because if they were not OEM and didn't work he might have to give a refund, for me they were well worth the $80.00 and the fact that they worked is always nice, but for only $80.00 it was worth the risk.

 

I finished my Boulder Accessories bumper/winch install a few hours ago. With some assistance from my brother, it took about 2 hours to do. Found a few good tips for those of you who may perform this install yourselves. Here's the pictures:

Removing the OEM bumper: (that's my brother, the Marine as if you couldn't tell from the haircut)


The new bumper, ready to be installed:


Still removing the OEM bumper:


Factory bumper and skid plate removed:


Sure is ugly without a bumper....


View of the winch that comes in the bumper:


Factory bumper removed:


View from the side with the factory bumper removed: ( I had 24" from center of hub to fender)




Lifting the new bumper up to the truck:




Ok, here's where I can give some advice. Take the 4 bolts out of the bottom that hold the winch on to the bumper. Move the winch about 3/4" to the driver side. The bolts that connect the tow hooks to the frame on the passenger side are slightly in front of the motor for the winch (they ship you 1 shorter bolt because of this). However, it's really tough to get the frame to line up without getting the whole bumper in a bind. So, easiest (and unfortunately not the first thing we thought of) thing to do is loosen and move the winch just a bit. Once the bumper is mounted, its still real easy to put the bolts back in the winch and tighten them.


Those are the 4 bolts that hold the winch to the bumper, remove them while lining up the bumper to the frame.


It's finally on!




Measurement after the bumper was installed is 23.5", so it brought down the front end 1/2". The bumper and winch showed to weigh 290 pounds on the shipping paperwork. I'm putting new rims and tires on next week, and I'll adjust the T-bars when I put them on to raise it back up a bit.






Fits really well, I like the design of it.


The instructions don't really have any information regarding the removal of the factory bumper, so we just started unbolting what looked like needed to come off. We probably unbolted more than we needed to and could have taken some individual pieces off as a whole. Also, you do you have to cut some of the plastic in front of the wheels to match the angle of the bumper. I did add wireloom over the winch electrical wires, I didn't want to be able to see the red wire through the grille, and also the point it goes through a section of the frame is rather sharp. Overall, it wasn't a bad install. I hope the pictures help.

One thing that sucks for us Texas folks though is that there's no place to mount the front license plate we're required to have displayed.

 

Thanks! No leveling kit. I turned the T-bars to level out the ride. The boat doesn't really squat the truck much. Maybe just enough to make it completely level.

The H3 pulls the boat better than what I expected. I mean I'm not going to win any races to the boat ramp or anything, but it's not a bad pull whatsoever. I'm right at the max weight with a full tank of fuel (which is a short trip since the gas station is across the street from the boat ramp).

 

It looks great, as for pulling a boat that size with ease the H3 is geared nice, I was impressed with the RPM's as were my sons, they seem to be running twice as many RPMs in soem case, the torque is great, so pulling a big boat like that just goes tshow they did something right when they put these things together. As for winning race, these babys are better known for their abilty to climb rocks and hills than running a drag strip, that said I've put my foot down a couple of times and can get decent speeds, they don't take off fast, but once we're rolling they will **** and git... I guess its obvious I like mine.

 

nice work on the brush guard! is there a place to mout your lisc. plate?

 

I saw a flip up or downtag plate cover that covers the slot on the wench

 

No, not as it is. I'll have to make something to mount it.

 

Do you have a link to a website that carries that? I didn't see one on the Boulder Accessories website.

 

Looks good, sorry didn't see this thread earlier but I don't get over here to much anymore. The install is very simple and easy, does take 2 people to help lift and line up.