Long Travel BS Thread

I’ll be curious to hear how they work for you even if temporarily, whether good or bad.

 

Remind me what length 550s you have please sir. I might want to step down since the rear stuffs so easily. I may have a bit less weight up front than you? I don’t know

 

Yeah I’ll let you know. Are you running 500lb or 550lb? I like how you have yours setup.

 

I have 18”x500. My bumper/winch/ifs skid is right at about 200 lbs. Really the only thing to be mindful of is block height of the coil when setting the preload on it. Don’t want the coil bottoming out on itself.

 

Yeah don’t want the coil to bind. I was told they were 550 springs but sure enough they said 500 when I got them home. Figured 550 would be the sweet spot. I’m switching to an aluminum bumper, no winch, so that might help.

 

what Al bumper are you going with?

 

Coastal off-road extreme clearance. Going to have JD fab do the once-over with lower pivots too.

 

Stoked to see how the aluminum one turns out! Always have been curious how strong they are compaired to steel.

 

I’d you’re not already messing up your plastic stock bumper aluminum should be more than adequate.

 

Just curious if the wings would have more flex and snap back to the original shape after being hit, or less flex and hold the same shape or just bend. I'm sure the winch portion wouldn't budge just since there is so much support in the center. I've gouged my wings a little bit and it has pushed them up a cunt hair, so might box in the inner side which is open. Or just not hit shit with them

 

Aluminum has less of an ability to “bounce back” than carbon steel. Most guys don’t hit stuff in the desert except for big wrecks so it’s all or nothing. Rock crawlers obviously are scraping all the time and steel is better for that. Desert trucks often run a steel tube bumper and aluminum skid plates to cut down on weight.

 

Actually Aluminum has more elasticity depending on the alloy than steel. Steel tends to dent and deform under certain hits where aluminum can take those same hits and return to it's normal state. This is why pretty much all bouncers, tons of trail rigs, and many other racers use 7075 t6 links vs DOM. Steel can just take harder hits before it deforms but it's ability to return is less than that of AL. Most plate AL bumpers first off use similar thickness and are just using a run of the mill AL plate and aren't engineered to take the same abuse as their steel counterpart. They're just made for light weight. Hell most of them I wouldn't even trust the ability of them to withstand hard winching.

 

Good catch - so since most bumpers are 3/16" plate a steel bumper will deform less and need to rebound less to keep its shape. Whereas a 3/16" aluminum plate bumper taking the same exact impact will deform more and rebound more, however the net outcome is a more out of form aluminum one.

 

Im in it for the weight savings. Its less of an issue to me of how it will take hits as I don’t play around in the rocks too much. If I did, I’d probably be looking at a hybrid style bumper in steel. That saves a nominal amount of weight and you get the strength of steel.

 

There is a lot of what iffs there. But for arguments sake lets just say a normal bumper smack against a rock. That's usually a pretty good smack. Those smacks are typically not hard enough to really deform the steel at all or very little and sure enough not past it's returning point. Whereas the AL counterpart it will deform quite a bit and in most cases past it's elasticity point and stay deformed. That's why personally to me an AL plate bumper is more for weight savings and the looks more so than actual function. If someone were to finally engineer one to take the same hard hits it would be priced so high practically no one would buy it.

Oh and one thing I forgot to mention the AL links typically aren't a whole lot lighter than their DOM equivalent because they have to be solid. They use them for that rebound ability more than weight savings.

 

I was a bit sloppy with the wording but basically hit for hit there's going to be a point where net displacement (post deformation and rebound) will be greater on an aluminum bumper of the identical design and if you're using the bumper for holding up your truck for a couple milliseconds after coming down 3-4' on it's way off a ledge or smack it into a boulder with an itchy trigger toe on the go pedal, you're going to be past that point. Kind of restating the previous thing I said, but for sure there's a reason crawlers prefer steel plate and desert race vehicles prefer tube and extended frame horns and aluminum skid plates - not too many boulders going to jump out in front of you and if you hit a g-out it'll be the steel skeleton of the bumper that takes the brunt of the force. If you can remove your stock bumper to replace with an aftermarket one and it's completely unscratched besides the grass and branches that you run over between the tire tracks off road, aluminum would be the way to go.

 

Shit we'll run AL if it'll be worth it. I'm going to be running AL skids. But yep I agree on that point.

 

Coastal Al runs around 47lbs with 1/4" plate, and steel one is around 96lbs! Quite a weight savings. Not sure if they add any extra gusseting or extra plate, so stoked to see it in the end. They are a great company to deal with

 

Depending on someone's expectations for how their truck performs and how they plan on using it 50lbs might be significant, I don't know though. Once my first gen is (hopefully) finished, it'll be the first truck with anything other than a stock bumper. I don't rock crawl and do my best not to run into things. The only experience I have with bulky steel bumpers is driving my 1st gen 200 miles from where I bought it back home. It had the requisite ARB front and CBI swing out rear bumper for uber overlanding. It was about as fun to drive as a 1960's full size American sedan - probably less thinking about it.

I don't like hanging a bunch of weight over the front and (well arguably a good thing for desert driving) rear of the vehicle. I suppose 50lbs might perceivably make a difference to this end.

 

Got one revalved and resealed, now just one more to go...