It's been a while since I've had any posts in this thread, mostly because my Ram just does exactly what I want it to and I haven't had cause to do much to it. It's got a bit under 60k miles on it now, purchased just over 5 years ago. Definitely fewer miles on it since Covid hit, but it just does what I want it to. Lately it's been suffering intermittent ABS failures, which can be annoying since they are annunciated with a "Ding!" When it's rapidly failing and unfailing the dings can continue incessantly for minutes at a time. This is a common known issue that somehow isn't a recall yet.
However one thing I'd wanted to do since purchase, and really since buying my first Ram 18 years ago, was get Ranch Hand bumpers for it. I always liked the look and also the durability in the event of hitting something like a deer or small building. However they're expensive and I had no desire to spend the money on them, I figured at some point there would be something that would happen to the bumpers and I'd spend the money then.
Back in July, that happened. I was rear-ended by an elderly woman in a Honda. The truck got off much better than the Honda did, but the check I got from insurance was enough to buy a set of front and rear Ranch Hand bumpers. I placed the order and they showed up last week. Over the weekend I had planned to install them, and ended up getting as far as getting the bumpers removed.
The front bumper was pretty easy to pull. That's 8 bolts, the grille has to come off to get at 2 of them (the other 6 you can get from below). The rear bumper is also not hard to remove, but you also have to remove the factory hitch. This is harder as, thanks to the design, you have to lift the bed of the truck up a couple of inches to slip the hitch off. That's not a big deal per se, but it is an annoying part of the design. For both front and rear bumpers you have to remove the factory parking sensors (a feature that I want to keep). The new bumpers have holes for these to be reinstalled, and the front bumper has brackets for reinstalling the factory driving lights.
I have to say my first impressions of these Ranch Hand bumpers leave me somewhat disappointed. Yes they're very heavy steel with welds across all joints. First the packaging was horrible. I have no idea how much of this was from 4 Wheel Parts (who I bought them from) and how much was how Ranch Hand shipped them, but it looked really bad. These way tougher than the factory bumpers, but the welds are frankly not any better looking than I could do if you look at them closely. The paint finish is good, but on the rear bumper there was a piece of welding wire (granted a small one) that had stayed attached through the whole process. On the front bumper, someone had tried to stack something on top of it it seemed, and two edges were bent. Originally I was going to return it, but it was a simple item to hammer back with a 5 lb sledge (and that didn't damage the appearance any) so I decided I didn't want to wait another 2 months. However then I went to go start bolting things up. The rear is missing some of the hardware and the front has no hardware for mounting the bumper (although it did have the hardware for mounting the driving lights).
Another annoyance (and I'm not sure how I missed this) is that the factory Class V hitch can't be left in place with this bumper. To me this is a dumb aspect of the bumper design, especially on a 1-ton truck. It really wouldn't have been hard to change the design such that it could be left in place. Maybe they're expecting that most of their buyers use goosenecks, but I don't. I'm still giving some thought to what I want to do to address this, but I think what I'm going to end up doing is cutting off some of the factory hitch so that it can fit up to/within the Ranch Hand rear and then welding it on.
In the end I know that I'll like it when it's all said and done, but a bit annoying to have to go to this level of extra effort for such an expensive product in the first place. For now, my truck has no bumpers. Hardware aside, the things are just too heavy to attempt to install without assistance. I'm sure someone could do it, but I'm not going to try.
