Hello everyone, my name is Oakley, I'm the owner of FTF Products.
It is an exciting day here at FTF Products, as we have taken posession of our 2016-2023 Tacoma rear bumper prototype. This prototype is the culmination of over a year of design, testing, and improvement.
As the opening date for preorders rapidly approaches, I thought it is only fitting to share the story behind this bumper and how we ended up here.
We will start with my truck. I use to own a 2020 TRD Offroad Tacoma in Cement Grey, and through my time modifying it for various offroad adventures, I found myself running into issues that required solutions not commerically available. Thus FTF Products was born, and I started selling the designs I had originally made for me. I had tested them, put them through their paces, and now sold them. This was the same mindset I had when it came to the Tacoma Bumper.
When it came time for me to add a high clearance rear bumper to my truck, I was disatisfied by the options on the market. Nothing was truely high clearance, they just slightly improved clearance over stock. This prompted me to go out and create my own bumper. On April 14th, 2023, I cut my bedsides to a height my imagined bumper would reach. I wanted clean lines, and for the bumper to fill the entire space behind the bed without the use of filler plates. Because of this, the cut was extremely high.
I ran this setup for a couple months, sketching out ideas and researching what elements I enjoyed from other bumpers before hand fabricating my own rear bumper. On June 2nd, 2023, I created what would later be called V1.
This bumper shares a lot of the same elements as later versions, however I was not pleased with it. The single lower bar didn't compliment the truck at all, it stood out. There weren't smooth curves, it felt boxy. Overall, every time I looked at the bumper it called out to me saying, I can be better. V1 lives on however, it has been on two trucks since mine (including one that rolled down a mountain and was pulled back up the mountain VIA the bumper. The bumper was then unbolted and sold again) and is still out there protecting people's trucks from rocks and other offroad obstacles.
Dissatisfied with my first attempt, I was keen on not repeating the same mistakes I had the first time during my second attempt. This time the goal was curves, or the illusion of curves. What I realized was the tailgate of these trucks is curved, the bedsides are curved, the frame is curved, everything has a curve to it and it is the bumper's job to marry all of these curves together into a functional piece of art. I made some sketches, bought some tube, and on July 23rd, 2023, V2 was born.
V2 is (largely) the final form of the 3g Tacoma rear bumper. For starters, two tubes were used on the bottom instead of one. This added visual mass to the bumper, but also created a curve affect due to the offset of the two tubes.
With a dozen or so slight changes from V1, V2 was truely beautiful. And the world thought so too. As soon as I posted this bumper to Instagram, people loved it. They loved the clearance, the frame was now the lowest part of your rear end. They loved the weight, coming in under the weight of the stock bumper meant no additional suspension work was required. But most importantly, they loved the functionality. When offroading with my friends in the snow, or doing stupid stuff in the rocks, whenever I or another person got stuck my truck was the easiest to recover or to strap to. We used nearly every bar on the bumper to pull from. The double lower bar support bars were used to pull from on tight trails or for towing, the side angled bars were used to recover people at a 90 degree angle on snowy trails, again and again and again. The thing just never quit. It got bashed on and drug across rocks, it got buried in the snow, it got mobbed down remote airstrips in the backcountry of Idaho, and through it all it held strong.
The current day
Sounds like the perfect design right? Tried, tested, verified to work when you just need something to work, why change? Well at the end of the day there were creature comforts that I didn't add simply because I didn't care for my truck. Things like a hitch reciever so I could put a Factor 55 hitch mounted recovery point in, or light pods so I could have chase lights. These were things that were easy to add, but did slightly change the design of the bumper. The two lower tubes spaced slightly apart in order to make room for the lights but still protect them from rock impacts. This made the bumper slightly lower than the frame which is where our frame mount ramp design came from.
Little changes here and there. But the old saying goes, the last 10% takes 90% of the time. And that was certainly true here. The general design of the bumper went by quick, but all the little details added up and soon we looked back and a year had passed. It was time. We partnered with a company to get the prototype made and voila, the design came to life
So what's the current state of play, what is going on with the FTF Products 3g Tacoma rear bumper, and when can you finally get your hands on one? Well I have good news. The prototype is getting mounted within a week, and once fitment is verified we will be opening up preorders. Due to the extensive testing done with V2 (and the minor changes made between it and V3), our testing window is significantly shorter than it otherwise would be. Here's our expected timeframe:
December 15th: Preorders Open
January 15th: Preorders Close
Mid March / Early April: Bumpers Ship
This timeline is subject to possible change, however we are optimistic that it will be fairly close to that.
Thank you to everyone who has supported FTF Products over the past year and a half of design and testing, we cannot wait to bring you this amazing bumper, where form meets function.
- Oakley, Owner FTF Products
