how hard was the install? i'll be doing this sometime this week. pretty straightforward?
It wasn't too bad. I'm not too much of a mechanic. There were a few tough parts, I'll try to list out the gotchas here.
The bumper is moderately light, but a pain to remove/put back by yourself. The middle of the bumper loves to get hung up on the body plastic in the center both during removal and installation. There are two sneaky bolts in this area near the hood latch in addition to the four large bumper nuts. That's the area that is a real pain.
Make sure you have a 5/8" drill bit - it's not a common size and actually hard to find. The first two 5/8" holes are ok, but the 2nd two (drilling into the bumper once it's back on) are extremely difficult to get a drill into. A close quarter drill is very handy, though mine was only a 3/8" chuck so I had to use the full size drill with the 5/8" bit. It would be optimal to have a close quarter drill that you can use your 5/8" with. I used 3 or 4 different smaller size drill bits as I stepped up to 5/8".
Before you tighten everything down make sure that the holes from the main winch plate line up with the fairlead plate holes well enough to stick bolts through. Mine were ever so slightly off late in the install and I had to go loosen a few things up to align them.
The instructions in mine listed the incorrect sizes for the bumper hardware. I believe the nuts were 21mm and the two sneaky bolts were 10mm (instructions said 18mm and 15mm, online instructions say 21mm and 15mm).
The 1" tab on the bumper that you have to bend or remove must be bent towards the FRONT of the truck, not backwards. I opted to cut it off instead, it's just in the way.
If you have a front license plate bracket with rivets, they are a pain in the ass to drill out. I didn't find any magic trick other than drilling and fighting. Some swearing helped... and a beer.
The instructions don't mention anything about what to do with the rubber dust cover. It won't fit back into its original spots with the winch plate installed - not enough slack, though it's close. I zip tied it instead of using the plastic plugs.
