Building A One-Off Bumper And Roll Pan Install - Rear End Rehab - Tech

The first thing I did was to mock up the roll pan in its stock guise. To do this required removing the bumper since the pan was so long and needed to butt up against the bottom of the tailgate. It's still too long so after some careful measurements were made...

...it was off to the HTP MicroCut 301 plasma cutter to trim the excess metal away.

The line at which we made our cut is actually a 1/2-inch longer than the panel needs to be.

This was done to allow us to fold the panel on the line, giving a mounting surface for the side panels of the roll pan. Note the 1/4-inch hole that will serve as the mounting point under the bed.

For the back side of the roll pan, I simply drilled and tapped the rear cross sill and installed the roll pan directly to it.

When the bumper is installed, the hardware disappears, resulting in a clean installation.

As much as was removed from the original roll pan, it was still a bit clunky at the back end. My original intention was to make a low profile roll pan so as to hide the back part of the frame and the spring shackles, not so much add an entire panel under the bed.

So back to the plasma cutter I went and another few inches were hacked off the top of the roll pan. The other thing I observed was by moving the roll pan underneath the bed as opposed to flush with the rear cross sill, it gave the appearance of being further streamlined as it broke up the back panel. Instead of your eye seeing a panel that was flat from the top of the tailgate to the bottom of the roll pan, the roll pan is moved under the bed and the bumper is back at the bottom of the tailgate, visually.