Bored Clerk's Rear Bumper Build

I got these in the mail yesterday. An AcuAngle angle level and a tubing bracket to mount it to. This should help me get repeatable bends, I guess.



I also attempted to level my bender. But, there isn't a single level thing on it so it was hard to level it in any way that made sense. There is enough play in the die pivot that it's free to settle in wherever it wants. I'm just going to go for it and see how it goes!

I've got all day Saturday with no interruptions to work. I'm excited to get a lot of work done. It wasn't a complete bummer that I didn't get anything done during the week. It gave me a good chance to really consider what I was doing and in what order I should be doing it. I could have made a really sucky error that I will now avoid...I hope!

Should be a lot of updates on Saturday. Thanks for following, hope it's worth it. Haha.

 

Something that I did that also seemed to work. I took a long level (Contractor) I leveled the prebent area. I also leveled the end of the bend with the main length of tube. It did seem to work. We also bent slowly. Mid bend we checked the level. Slow and stable does work and if it starts to go wrong you can readjust. Once you do a few bends you will have it down pat. I am envious of your cost of the bender. Here is is 4x as much.

 

4 times as much!? Dang! The Canadian dollar is just in the tank.

 

Last quote I had was between 900 and 1200 depending on model. They were not the high end ones. And if I wanted an extra die for different tube it was 2-300. Mind you the shops around hear also charge 40 per bend. So it is all relative.

My frame plates were also more than double your cost remember. Even with shipping the price you found I almost went for it.

 

I'm back in the shop today. Getting stuff done. I cut some fill plates and tacked them in place. Nothing big to show there. I also filled two holes in my hitch receiver. With my bumper design, the current hitch pin location was a little too close to the front of the receiver. It would have been a hassle to deal with the hitch pin.


Welded in a plug on both sides.


Ground clean. No more holes!

I'll drill new holes this afternoon. First thing after lunch, I'm going to bend some tubing. Once that's done to my satisfaction, I can really get some welding done on this sucker!

 

Upside down, tack weld and gravity shot! I've got some drilling, tapping and a few welds to put down before I can get the support tube welded in place. Taking my time to make sure I get it all right.

 

So far so good!

 

Made a lot of progress today! I'm really happy with how it's going.


I welded a 1/4" thick plate on top of the 3/16" wall square tubing to give additional thickness for tapping. I needed tapped holes to mount the catches for the de-sta-co latches. 8mm x 1.25 plug tap, tapping handle, and some tapmatic cutting fluid...go to work.


Holes tapped. Temporary bolts threaded in to keep any weirdness from happening between the plates and to the threads during finish welding.


Did a lot of welding and ended up with this! I'm happy because it warped a little early on but I was able to clamp it back true before adding the brace tube. After all that welding, I was nervous to unclamp it. My luck on this project thus far would dictate that, once a clamp was released, it would spring so hard it would lodge itself in the freakin' wall. Well, it didn't! It has the tiniest bit of bow but it's so minute that I've erased it from my mind.




Just some random shots so all the kids tuned in can see what amateur hour on the welding channel looks like...and to, hopefully, get any tips I can from the collective!

That's it for today! I'll be back on it tomorrow since my motivation is high after today's success. There is a lot of welding and grinding to do so updates tomorrow may not be very exciting.

 

Great stuff

 

Thanks!

 

Spent a lot of hours to end up here...looking like nothing happened. Haha.




There is a LOT of finish welding and grinding. I really need to take a class or hire someone to come show me how to be a better welder. I've watched tons of videos and read some stuff but it just hasn't quite clicked. I'm becoming a better grinder than I am a welder. That's how you know you're going the wrong direction!

Oh, and last night, the truck turned 60,000 miles.

Not a big deal, I just happened to be stopped when I noticed.

That's it for today. I'm going to go out and 'enjoy' the nice weather with a quick run. Then some good 'ol relaxin'.

 

Nice work, excited to see this build

 

Haha, you and me both! I'm mapping out my week nights this week...what I'm going to do each night to make real progress.

Next step is to get the hinges mounted. I bought 4xinnovation hinges to make the process easier. No need to reinvent the hinge when someone else already did the work!

Then, fitting the bumper to the truck and frame mounting plates. That's exciting because it'll be the first time I'll see how the proportions look on the rig!

 

Well, Monday's are almost always a rest evening. But especially so when your wife is wicked sick.

Tonight was mellow mostly because I may be getting sick as well...and today was BUSY at work.

But I did get out to the garage for a few minutes to investigate my hinges. I bought the 4xinnovation hinges. They look stout and fit well with my plans. I can't use a single shear spindle type hinge so the 4xinnovation double shear hinge was a natural fit.

Let's take a look.


From the center out: mounting brackets, hinge pins/bolts and i.d. bearing races, main hinge tube with tapered races, tapered roller bearings, and seals.


Bearings come pre-lubed with very sticky and very waterproof grease. Drop them into the main bearing tube.


Slide the inner bearing race sleeves in each end then slide that whole assembly into the mounting bracket. Once in position, slide the giant bolt through and put the nut on.


Tighten the nut and bolt until the bearing feels solid but not overloaded. The reason I put this together is to see how much the hinge bracket flexed when tightening the nut. You can flex it quite a bit but you will bind the bearing and be unhappy. I needed to know this so that I could make an educated guess about my next steps...which you will see at some point down the road.


Here's the general idea. I really want to cut a relief in the main bumper tube so that this bracket sits flush. I probably will. I'm not too worried about flex like I saw in main bumper tube fail v.1 because it's right at the end and it's such a short distance. It mostly needs to be flush because that would look dope! What do the kids in the car scene call it? Hellaflush? Yeah, I like that.

(Yes, I know that hellaflush has to do with the relationship between wheels and fender lips)

 

Did a bit of work this evening.





I cut out recesses for the hinge mounts to seat into. Cross one thing off the list.

Back at it tomorrow!

 

Looks great!

 

Thanks! It would be so much easier to just buy a nice bumper, but what would the fun be in that?

 

Lol, I bought a Trail Gear tube rear and drunken yard fabbed double swingouts on to it

 

And now you have a bumper and I have a useless pile of steel. Haha

 

Maybe true, more respect for your way. Digging your hybrid square/round design, subbed for finished install