Red Rocket an expedition build

here is 2 views the entire point of that little boxed portion was to hold this tab, this tab will hold the inner fender hopefuly this will keep the mud off the bumper and keep everything looking nice and stockish.

 

up next i finished welding the mounting brackets just connected the welds i don't think that i will be grinding these welds down, the front and easily visible welds have all been ground down, i am not inclined to risk grinding down these critical welds that i can not really access so easily on the inside to get a great weld on them. and they are hard to see once painted.

What do yall think?

 

next the light brackets are fabed in, i fabed these in but i think that my new plan is to weld some tabs on that i can use something to hold the stock lights in, my birthday is tomorrow and i think that my girlfriend has gotten me HID lights so i think that i will try to use to stock fogs and order an hid kit to go with that.

 

next was to finish the winch mount, this is what i was talking about earlier in the build. its 1/4 inch thick. This is where i ran into a big problem, my step drill bit broke 1/2 way through this so i had to drive 20 min to harbor freight tools when i got there i realized that i had forgoten my wallet, i had $8.25 in my change compartment. i had to flirt with the heavy manager girl for 15 min to get what i needed for that price.

 

and here she is with the rear 1/4 bar installed had to do a lot of grinding for this to fit over the weld that held the winch plate. it sucked.

 

and a couple of 45's on a side note after about 6 years and 100's of pounds of wire i think i have about welded the linner out of my welding torch. anyone done this? it is feeling like the welder is haveing to try a lot harder to push the wire through

 

and here is the final thing i got done today, i think that this spot is the most likly to take a serious hit offroad. so I am trying to brace it up, the bumper has gotten a lot heavier 10 lbs of welding wire, i couldn't believe that.
this will have 2 more supports running down from the 1/4 inch bar stock to the bottom edge of the bumper, i think this will make it much much stronger to hits.

 

wow man, that's very impressive. you got some serious skills and knowledge. this bumper looks great! it's much less overwhelming than the other bumpers and i think it will look great once painted up. it's very uniform looking, definitely not something bubba fabbed up over the weekend in the trailer park, lol. it will look like something that rolled off the assembly line.

 

thanks a lot. thats 100% what i was going for you just sumed it up great.

 

Wow I am glad I clicked this thread! Good job man. That bumper is the tits.

 

thanks a lot man i appriciate it

Today my gf gave me my HID headlights. which means that i may run the stock fogs so that i can HID them as well so i welded on some little tabs so that i could maybe ziptie the lights in.

 

added another brace on the side of the bumper not sure if this is going to help anything but makes me feel better.

 

i completed the lower braceing here is 2 pictures of it i was going to put a conneting brace between the vertical ones but after setting it in it was clear that it was going to be a mud trap and i couldn't get the angle right for it not to be.

 

here is a shot of the back of the bumper

 

its starting to get really heavy now, i have some 5100's and 620lbs springs but i may have a chance to get something much better,

i have a friend that has a 4runner just installed these and got offered a straight up trade for a much newer tl with a lot less miles and he kind of needs a car. I may be able to trade for these Overland Warehouse 2.0 radflo coilovers. Idk if this will go through. this would be a great trade i think based on the ride in this 4runner.

 

today started out with paint prep,
i think that this looks really cool but i ground them down later.

 

then i spent a bunch of time grinding everything and took a 360 degree shot.

 

keeping that going

 

and here she is loaded up in the bed of the truck, takes up right at the entire thing.

 

and finaly droping her off at the powdercoating