DIY Bumpers

Anybody tried the cbi diy front bumpers?

 

Curious as well!

 

Same. Just wondered if it was worth it.....

 

At half the cost of the Moab, it just might be. Might only be a couple hundred to get a shop to weld it, or, if you're like me, just booger weld it yourself and spend that $200 on grinding discs (I'm not a great welder... lol)

 

Lol that was funny!!


If anyone in the bay area is interested, I'm willing to see if we can work out a deal and I will weld it. LMK soon.

 

It seems to me if you are going to pay to have it welded .

Other then shipping costs one that is assembled might cost more to ship.

May as well have it welded by the manufacture .

Who has all the fixtures to make it a speedy process

 

Fixtures yes, definitely. Without a jig to hold all of those pieces EXACTLY in the proper position & angle before you weld, you're liable to end up with a fancy, abstract sculpture!

 

I guess it comes down to how big your production runs are

If your only building a few a month compared to a few a day

 

Exactly, currently working in heavy fab, some fixtures are use in production with high volume of units

But I'm very surprised in how much hand fitting is done but it takes patience and these fitters have years of experience.


So yes you can build a nice bumper with out jigs and fixtures just double check your angles, balence weld. If yes mess up just cut it up and start over ahaha

 

It all comes down to what works best.

Did the welder also do all the cutting and prep work of the raw materials

 

I did mine with a diy bumper from Relentless and it came out fine. When you tack the pieces together while on the truck you can actually get a better fit than a generic one for all fixture. Doing it yourself you line it up with the truck and if your truck may be off a tad the bumper will sit like you want it to. It was a fun project.

 

I bought the cbi 1st gen diy bumper it went together easy and it's a nice bumper. The pieces on top that are tacked on are something i added myself so it would fill in gap and just left opening for winch.

 

Nice. Thats what I figured. I work in fab but I don't do production. Its all R&D.

 

I do apologize to the OP for going off on a tangent here .

My whole comment was why buy a Kit if you then have to pay $$$$ someone to weld it for you .

Like for what ever reason you can`t do it yourself and have no friends close enough to do it for the cost of consumables .

 

This also depends. I can't find it at the moment, but I saw not that long ago a guy who offers CAD files for a bumper. You take it to a fab shop and they cut out the pieces, and you pick them up and weld yourself, no shipping costs. ~$300 in materials for a pretty bad ass looking fully built bumper, if you weld yourself, or maybe $200-300 extra for having a shop weld it. That's still $300-400 less than the CBI Moab ($900). Not bad for a sweet plate bumper.

But even the CBI DIY bumper at half the cost of the assembled one, and maybe $70 in shipping for the steel. Then maybe $200 or so for someone else to weld it at a shop, and you're still coming in under the cost of the assembled one.

 

I'm curious: I've got a welder, but I'm wondering if it will even be up to the task. It's a Lincoln 125 HD wire feed. I'm fully aware there are "better" welders, just wondering if I should even bother trying given the thickness of material.

I know at a minimum it'll take "a while" with multipassing, etc... it'd be a long term project anyway.

 

hence my earlier comment about spending $200 on grinding discs...

Part of it is I wasn't sure as to the typical thickness of plate bumpers, but sounds like 3/16 is typical... cool. thanks

 

A little of column A, a little from column B. I think my problem is consistency. I've built a couple large gates, and various other stuff, and you can generally tell which welds I started on, and the ones I finished on, lol. I just don't do it consistently enough for it to be 2nd nature. I'm just a weekend warrior.

So, I don't mind it being a project to learn on.

 

You're right there are better welders and I personally wouldn't buy a flux core but it is a machine that will allow u to put that bumper together. Like Assburns has mentioned, it will weld the thickness that you want. Whats great about building this plate bumper is that no matter how good your welds are, you will grind them down so that it has a smooth uniform finish. That being said, there is no need to be stacking dimes on this thing. I say order the kit and do it. It'll be a lot of work but itll turn out.

Cutting out my bumper at work rn as we speak lol.

 

If you go flux core get the spatter spray for easy clean up.

Did some tube bending and notching on my bumper.

@frenchee you going full plate?