So back in late December, Ryan from Addictive Desert Designs and I started talking about the perfect bumper for my truck. ADD had recently come out with their new Stealth design, and I knew that was our starting point.... All it needed was a few lil' custom tweaks and my truck's perfect crowning jewel would be under construction.
When we got to the drawing board, we decided to go with heavier-duty metal for the plating and skid. At the time, ADD was making other Stealth bumpers in a two-tone finish, gloss on the skids and hammer-tone on the tubing. I liked the matte look and rough texture of the hammer-tone finish. I decided I wanted to be the first to try doing all of the tubing and plating in hammer-tone, but then during the fab-up some sneaky sonsabitch in a sexy Raptor by the name o' SOCOMech had the same great idea and went and re-painted his ADD bumper in a full hammer-tone. As soon as I saw pics of his finish, I knew I was gonna love mine in person, and I was right. The finish is awesome, it's like a finer (in both senses of the word) version of the texture on the stock running boards.
For the beefier skidplate, I asked Ryan to give me the water-jetted ADD logo but also room for a front license plate. I'm not going to run one just yet (never have) but it's the law where I live and for some reason Cops here seem to suddenly be making a big deal about whips that aren't wearing them. For that reason, the ADD logo was moved higher up on the skid plate and beneath the logo, 4 tiny holes were drilled through it so a front plate can be mounted at any point later on. I'm not a fan of front plates, but at least I have custom Texas plates on the way that are all black with only a white half-star and white letters. The fromt plate might actually look alright on there if it ever goes on.
I knew I wanted to get a little nutty with the lighting. I loved the look of the two-bar setup, and also knew ADD had not built a Stealth with 2 Rigid Industries light-bars. Naturally I wanted mine to be a bit unique, at least for the time being, and throw a ton of light, so the 2 light-bar twist was thrown into the mix. For optimum lighting, we went with a white light-bar on top and an amber light-bar on bottom. The white light is great for distance and clarity offroad while the amber is better for cutting through fog, smoke, and most importantly, dust from other trucks. The white bar and amber bar look exactly the same when the lights are off, but there is a distinct difference both inside and outside the cab when they are on. Just for an added ****-you-factor, a pair of Rigid Industries new D2 lights were thrown behind the first pair of dimples adjacent to each side of the skid plate. They are bright, but I need to do some adjusting on their current positioning. The white bar and the D2s are wired together on Aux Switch 1, and the amber bar is wired on Aux Switch 2. The total result of the setup is absolutely blinding to anyone not in the cab, and truly "turns night into day" for the driver.
This bumper has a total of 12 mounting points (2 drilled) and feels unbelievably sturdy. My friend made the comment "you could drive through a ******* bank vault with that thing on there."
One of my Vato buddies on the job site exclaimed "¡Tú TúmbaBúrro es bien Chingón!" I laughed my ass off because that literally translates to "Your DonkeyTumbler is ******' bad!"
It doesn't matter what language you speak, I think you can agree that ADD and Rigid Industries put together the perfect bumper for my truck. Big thanks to the fine folks at both companies.
When we got to the drawing board, we decided to go with heavier-duty metal for the plating and skid. At the time, ADD was making other Stealth bumpers in a two-tone finish, gloss on the skids and hammer-tone on the tubing. I liked the matte look and rough texture of the hammer-tone finish. I decided I wanted to be the first to try doing all of the tubing and plating in hammer-tone, but then during the fab-up some sneaky sonsabitch in a sexy Raptor by the name o' SOCOMech had the same great idea and went and re-painted his ADD bumper in a full hammer-tone. As soon as I saw pics of his finish, I knew I was gonna love mine in person, and I was right. The finish is awesome, it's like a finer (in both senses of the word) version of the texture on the stock running boards.
For the beefier skidplate, I asked Ryan to give me the water-jetted ADD logo but also room for a front license plate. I'm not going to run one just yet (never have) but it's the law where I live and for some reason Cops here seem to suddenly be making a big deal about whips that aren't wearing them. For that reason, the ADD logo was moved higher up on the skid plate and beneath the logo, 4 tiny holes were drilled through it so a front plate can be mounted at any point later on. I'm not a fan of front plates, but at least I have custom Texas plates on the way that are all black with only a white half-star and white letters. The fromt plate might actually look alright on there if it ever goes on.
I knew I wanted to get a little nutty with the lighting. I loved the look of the two-bar setup, and also knew ADD had not built a Stealth with 2 Rigid Industries light-bars. Naturally I wanted mine to be a bit unique, at least for the time being, and throw a ton of light, so the 2 light-bar twist was thrown into the mix. For optimum lighting, we went with a white light-bar on top and an amber light-bar on bottom. The white light is great for distance and clarity offroad while the amber is better for cutting through fog, smoke, and most importantly, dust from other trucks. The white bar and amber bar look exactly the same when the lights are off, but there is a distinct difference both inside and outside the cab when they are on. Just for an added ****-you-factor, a pair of Rigid Industries new D2 lights were thrown behind the first pair of dimples adjacent to each side of the skid plate. They are bright, but I need to do some adjusting on their current positioning. The white bar and the D2s are wired together on Aux Switch 1, and the amber bar is wired on Aux Switch 2. The total result of the setup is absolutely blinding to anyone not in the cab, and truly "turns night into day" for the driver.
This bumper has a total of 12 mounting points (2 drilled) and feels unbelievably sturdy. My friend made the comment "you could drive through a ******* bank vault with that thing on there."
One of my Vato buddies on the job site exclaimed "¡Tú TúmbaBúrro es bien Chingón!" I laughed my ass off because that literally translates to "Your DonkeyTumbler is ******' bad!"
It doesn't matter what language you speak, I think you can agree that ADD and Rigid Industries put together the perfect bumper for my truck. Big thanks to the fine folks at both companies.
