Rocket Man's 2008 Bagged CC Silverado Build AKA "THE MACHINE"

[Rocket Man]

That sucks... Didn't know yours was chrome. When i did mine, I got the painted bumper

Well... I didn’t know mine was chrome either until lately.

Edit: this is the bumper that was on the truck when I bought it but I was thinking about installing a 2015 one. I actually have one of those I got for free but my mounts are made for the 07-14 one and won’t work on the 15. My frame isn’t stock so it’s not an easy swap like yours was. I’d have to fab mounts and decided to just run the one I have for now at least.

 

[07Burb]

To be fair, painting over chrome is not the easiest thing to accomplish. Doing what @NathanJax did and painting a painted bumper is more ideal

 

[Rocket Man]

To be fair, painting over chrome is not the easiest thing to accomplish. Doing what @NathanJax did and painting a painted bumper is more ideal

Agreed 100%. I waa under the assumption I needed to buy the entire bumper minus the black plastic parts because that’s what I found when I searched and they’re $400 aftermarket. Today I pulled it and went to my auto paint supply store to get aircraft stripper but they don’t like Mondays. Tues-Sat only. Which was great because I came home and was looking at the thing and noticed the ends are riveted on. So I looked up the parts schematic and I saw I can buy just the paintable ends. And then believe it if not I can get them on Amazon for about 50 bux each. And I had just dropped off parts from my Denali that I was returning and by the time I got home that was already available in my Amazon account. Love their return policy- as soon as the boxes are scanned in at the shipping place they put the money in my account. So it was almost a wash. Score! Too bad it’s not Prime 2- day shipping but that’s fine. Oh, also I noticed one side had a small dent anyway. It doesn’t look like they even roughed up the chrome before painting.

 

[Rocket Man]

I decided to look at installing the 120v receptacle in the rear bumper. My goal is to be able to plug in the battery maintainer at the back of the truck. I installed an outlet in that corner of my garage when I remodeled it so I’ll just need a short extension cord. No more opening the hood and having a wire hanging down and a cord run along the fence. I ordered a mountable tender which OptiMate doesn’t make so I bought a Noco. I’ll extend the power cable and run it with my other harnesses along the frame.
At first I was going to remove the trailer wire receptacle and replace it with the one I bought from Noco. Which would have been ok but I decided since I wasn’t going to use the factory one anyway, I could see if I could cut it up and use it as a cover for the new one. So now it will look like the factory trailer connector but when you open it up there’s a 120v receptacle instead. The tender will be all wired in so all I’ll have to do this winter is open that cover and plug in the cord. I still have to take it apart and paint everything but the prototype is done.

 

[Fless]

Very innovative! Thinking outside the box...

 

[Fless]

Now you got me thinking. If the charger was not mounted in the truck you could just charge it through a modified 7-blade adapter, using the 12v Aux (connected at the fusebox, of course) and ground conductors in the trailer connector.

 

[Rocket Man]

Now you got me thinking. If the charger was not mounted in the truck you could just charge it through a modified 7-blade adapter, using the 12v Aux (connected at the fusebox, of course) and ground conductors in the trailer connector.

But then the charger would be out in the weather, snow and all. Or I guess I could extend the 12v output wires from the charger and keep it in the garage. I like this way better though with an extension cord from the garage to the back of the truck. The charger is pretty small, it should be easy to mount even though my under hood space is limited.

Amazon.com

 

[Fless]

But then the charger would be out in the weather, snow and all. Or I guess I could extend the 12v output wires from the charger and keep it in the garage. I like this way better though with an extension cord from the garage to the back of the truck. The charger is pretty small, it should be easy to mount even though my under hood space is limited.

Amazon.com

Agree completely, what you have is perfect for your setup.

 

[Rocket Man]

I got the bumper ends today. I need to sand the orange peel out of them and then paint, clear and assemble. I painted the main bumper parts in flat black.

 

[Rocket Man]

The paint came out pretty good, a couple fine dust specs blew onto them but I’m happy. Now the hard part- not touching them until tomorrow. I so want to go rivet them on lol.