Houston area (along with DB's not from Houston) BS thread

There is a difference between overbuilding, and being wasteful/unnecessary.

 

Billy also makes a hybrid for the 2012.




Here's the finished plate bumper.

 

Not on his website

That's all of tx lol, above 60, time to go outside

I am genuinely telling you this, I don't know the difference between the 2, I just know what is stronger, why not elaborate?

I think it looks fine, but I agree.

 

With spikes?? Just in case the daddy dear comes out for vengeance?

 

I've bounced my ARB off of more stuff than I care to remember. It particularly likes parking lot gates.

 

Oops... Forgot what you had

 

Pipe is going to be heavier, but you have a good amount of weight to work with when you consider that the stock bumper and trailer package weigh about 100lbs.

The round tubing, welded or drawn over mandrel, is lighter than pipe but will require more triangulation for strength.

 

Sup sup

 

What's going on?

 

Bumper shipped today, never been so un-excited ..

 

like everything, it's a ballance. the major difference (asside from strength), that you see is the price. size dependant of course, but for 1.5 pipe, you could be looking at $1.75 a foot, vs $5.00 a foot for tube.

the next thing to consider, is what is the point of failure, or weakest link. say you find this new CV that is impossible to break. awesome, right? well, turns out, your diff is now the weakest link, and being that it was not far behind CVs in the strength department, you just toasted a $1000 part instead of a $200 one.

same reason a lot of people don't like the heim steering on stock racks. replacing a bent tie rod is a lot easier and cheaper than replacing a rack you blew the teeth off of.

so how does this relate to you? would you rather bend a bumper wing or light hoop, and have to cut that off and build a new one, or would you rather that same hit crumple part of your frame (but at least the bumper is in tact). we have pretty strong frames, so that's no more than an example, but it could be an issue on some other vehicles or applications.

a lot of people just get DOM happy and think that because it's stronger, it's better, when in fact, if the rest of your equipment isn't up to the same standards, the extra strength won't do any good.

Racks are a perfect example of that. if your bolting to your roof, or the bed rails, or even going to the bed bolts that tie into the frame. pipe is going to be far stronger than any anchorpoint available. so right of fthe bat, why would you spend the extra money to use tube?

then you get to the design itself. say we're designing some shock hoops or a bed cage. a well designed pipe bedcage will be far stronger than your average tube bedcage that just has some triangulation tossed in here and there. kind of like 1/4 inch skids. I would take a 3/16'' gussetted skid plate every time, before i got a 1/4'' standard syle skid plate.

The question i ask myself is, if you can build it out of pipe, and meet or exceet your weight & strength criteria, why use tube. you've already met your structural goals (which you already have a safety factor built into), so the extra strength of tube is bringing you beyond overbuilt, to a point where that extra strenght is jsut sitting there, tieing up your money.

 

Damn straight, now build me some skids Kase!

 

I missed something. What did you buy?

 

logical post.. +1

 

lol... i guess kiddies get high off of it

 

Quite a logical post, very thorough and explained to the point that I actually understand it. I will bring another argument to the table though, with money aside, building the bumper stronger than OEM creates a weak point in the frame causing it to bend, or crack even, why not beef up the frame? What would be the weak point then? I'm not saying I will ever rock trails hard enough to even dent a DOM rear bumper (hell the mild stuff I do I don't really worry about), but the truck would get to a point where it would have no weak points, no? I was always under the impression that if it breaks, you fix it to where it won't break again.

 

I'm good with that method. Use angle on the edges for strength like you did earlier, just skip the 1/4" stuff. You'll be fine with 3/16".