Here are some pix i'm freeloading off of Mark's unlimited bandwidth photobucket lol.

Thank you both for taking so many shots. i really appreciated it all. I had one hell of a time with you all. Has to be one of my more favorite trips. Was nice to meet you n' your wife Red wagon.

Considering it was a heck of a lot of pix(385 to be exact) i'll just post up the ones of my rig and group shots on this thread. I figure we have Mark's shots on his thread and some of Red Wagons pix on his own thread as well.












































Great Bumper Shots
















her rear end flexes very nicely




























































ASS FLEX!!!












































That turned out to be a heck of a lot more pix then i expected. and i didnt even post them all. lol wow.

 

so much awesome pictures you guys
i see marks rck lights working awesomely an your LED bumper lights rich all over ill be ya'll had a great time

 

Thanks dude. And yea it was pitch black when we were headed out of the trail. We sent Mark out with his 360 degree lighting up in the front. Had Red Wagon in the middle, And my traveling behind them all. Needless to say we were all extremely well lit.

 

Great photos!

Rich, your new red 4WD logos are fading....what gives??

 

After we made the rear bumper I lost the supporting brackets for those mud flaps along with the stock bumper. So the mud flaps pretty much hang down. And once in a while they'd get caught on the tire and get pulled on the top of the tire causing the tire to rub on the red lettering. And well that's actually how I had one ripped off this weekend too lol.

I'm going to have to buy 4 new mudflaps and fab up some brackets of some sort to keep them from being torn off by the tires. Will probably just got with some after-market DIY mud flaps. But that red color on the current ones kinda grew on me over these past 2 years. I really like it.

 

I like it too! Red rocks! Haha. .. How u doin bubba?

 

Lmao! I watched this video last night and I dreamt that this was mine. In the dream it had so much power and torque that it was able to bust wheelies when youd step on it a lot. Too bad it was just a dream. Would love to have a Chevy 350 V8 under the hood of my truck. That'd be awesome. Oh well, some day whenever my rebuilt engine kicks the bucket I will consider one of these or the toyota 3.4L v6.

 

Sick! Still like the 1UZ for the V8 SWAP..... EFI/UP TO 270HP with a few mods- More with SC'er/17-19mpg/all from a 4.0 liter!.....but on the negative, WAY more work as a swap. That is so sick Rich, I miss my old V8's! Remember that Jeep my neighbor had? 6.4 SC'd Escalade motor! C R A Z Y!

 

Hi guys. So here's a few things we didnt mention. Due to all the flopping around and rigorous trails we went on this past weekend i ended up breaking my tire carrier.

YES IT BROKE! I honestly dont remember using such thin metal but i can see why i chose it to begin with though. I probably wanted the swing to be light due to the heavy load of the rear bumper's 1/4" steel. So i went with 1/16th tubing. Blahhh!!!!

Needless to say it held up nicely for the short time it was in tact but the almighty weight of the tire and steel rim won with its weight and the brute force of my driving lol I pretty much punctured a hole in the tube.

We didnt notice this until we were done wheeling and had already arrived at the hotel. I was grabbing my things when i noticed my tire wasnt sitting completely vertically like normal. It was more like an " / " and when i went to take a closer look i saw that the entire tire was only hanging by about 1/4" of weld just barely holding on to that 1/16" thick wall of the tube. I was amazed i had even managed to get back to the hotel without it falling off. God was definitely watching over somebody because it held on for dear life. lol After realizing how it was i started to think.... "OMG... all those people traveling behind me on the street. that tire could have easily flown off and bounced right into their car as they drove. oh my. im so happy nobody got hurt." After i seen that dismounted the tire, Andrew threw the tire up on my roof rack (thank goodness for the rack) and i strapped the tire down. then i seen that with the small movements of removing that tire i had broke the metal that it was hanging on by even more. And out here in California we absolutely need to have a rear license plate and have it lit up well. So i had to use some tie straps to tie down the license plate tightly against the tire swing. and well here is the pix to show you how the tire carrier looked when i got back home.













I decided to use some of the leftover 3/16" plate steel from my front bumper to use as reinforcements for the tire swing. Here are the plates


And this time i asked my dad if he could do all the welds. I feel confident in my work, but i would much rather him do it.


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While my dad was welding i was working on grinding and sanding some of the welds on the other end of the carrier. and although i wasnt looking directly into the arc of his welds it still jacked up my eyes really bad. I didnt think i needed a mask since i wasnt looking but boy was i wrong. We welded from about 12-3pm and from 3-9pm when we were done i noticed that my eyes felt more tired then normal. they felt like a long day at the beach when you get salt water in your eyes. and they feel almost burnt. Well that night after sleeping for about 4 hours i woke up at 1:30am in horrible pain. My eyes were on fire! My eye lids and all around my eyes felt as if i had taken sand paper to the skin thats how raw it felt. My eyes were completely bloodshot, and stinging, my eyeballs and eyelids were super swollen, and my eyes were tearing like crazy. And the worst of all is that i could not see anything. let alone open my eyes. That was the scariest part of all. I honestly thought i was gonna be blind. I got up in panic went for the door and woke my dad up. I was too scared to even think straight. Told them what was happening to me and was asking my dad why this is happening. After he said he has had that happpend to him a long time ago while welding i eased up a little after he assured me i would be okay in a day or 2. but that still didnt help any of the excruciating pain i had in both my eyes. He told me for the mean time to cut 2 slivers of potato and wear them on my eye lids(like a facial) and wrap my head to hold them in place. Said that's what they did to him when it happened to him. It is supposed to ease the burning sensation and make your eyes feel a bit fresh. Then i had my mom get my cell phone so i could call the graveyard shift supervisor to call off work for my shift that next morning. Parents told me to try to sleep and it might be better in the morning. if not they would take me to the doctor first thing in the morning. and Yes the potatos did help ...for a few hours. Then the swelling got worse and the pressure of those potato slices were pressing too hard on my eyes so i took them out.

Mind you this whole time im trying to avoid rubbing my eyes at all cost. The irritation along is enough to make you go crazy but the pain you get after rubbing your eyes is even worse! sometimes i couldnt help myself i had to rub. And when i would rub my eyes it was like pressing the restart button on the pain to my eyes all over again. I woke up in the morning with my pillow wet from the tears that were just an on going thing throughout the night. curtains inside the house were all closed and what little light did get through was extreamely sensitive to my eyes. I could not bare to see any light. not even from a cell phone. I was however able to see by now though. But that sensitivity was horrible, irritation wasnt as bad, swelling had gone down a bit, and the redness really went down.
Here were my eyes in the morning(just remember the red almost took over all the white surface area of the eye balls and it was much darker when i woke up at 1:30am. These pix were from 10am.


We called my insurance with Kaiser and couldnt make an appointment and was told i would have to be taken to the emergency room or urgent care and wait till 5:30pm for when they begin accepting walk ins. what kind of crap is that!?!?! So we had to wait. then we remembered we have an old family friend who used to work for an optometrist and we called her to get a 2nd opinion. And she told us to go to a specific kaiser permanente building close to us that specializes in eyes(thats all the do) I put on my dad's 100% UV protection glasses strip from his last eye check up and just with wearing those glasses from driving from the house to the kaiser my eyes stopped watering the swelling went down, my eyes felt a hell of alot better just by wearing those because it protected my eyes from the UV rays from the outdoor light. When we arrived they took me in quickly and checked up my eyes. Did a full eye exam. And the eye doctor told me i had Astigmatism, and Myopia in both eyes. He explained that i pretty much got really bad sun burn on my eyes. But i dont have any permanent damage. He said my eyes would probably be a little sensitive for a few days and my sight should be back to normal within 2-3 days. Gave me some normal Eye drops to use whenever my eyes felt dry and told me to buy a decent pair of UV protection glasses. So we did just that.

This picture was taken about 24 hours after i was welding.


My eyes feel fine now I have little traces of radiation burn in the middle of both eyes going from left to right on each eye but its going away already. although i think im still recovering because i cant stare into the computer screen for too long yet. In fact my eyes feel a little tired typing this up right now. Im just happy i am not blind. Thank god for that I dont know what i would do if i could not see. All i have to say is i will never make the mistake of not wearing a welding mask ever again. Even if im not welding. So long as i am near that arc i will not be seen near it again without a mask.

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I really doubt this tire will have any problems holding on anymore. Not with these plates. But i seriously dont know where my mind was when i chose 1/16th tubing.... wow that should never be used in any instance. EVER! and if you do use it make sure to reinforce all mounting areas and corners where you connect to other tube. this is something that should never be overlooked. Im just glad i didnt cause a major accident.

Today I mounted the tire swing and got it primered and painted.
I didnt want to grind and sand down those welds too much because i wanted the tire swing to keep its strength so i just touched it up and smoothed it out a little bit. It's okay i dont mind. its made for an offroad truck anyway.




Already painted

 

Wow, glad your're doing better Richard

 

Dude,....... What were you thinking!?!?!?.... Hahaha. .. totally kidding, but very glad it didn't wind up with much worse with the tire... I was definitely much more concerned about your eyes! But seriously? Sweet resolution and repair! Excellent... Give the Pops some props too! By the way, when are they going wheeling with us next time? You going to drag them to Tierra del Sol? I believe its in February ... Maybe they would like more mellow trip to something like the Sierras with some hot springs and so forth? Gotta get in with you can before school starts! Let's go do some snow monkey soaks! Hahaha.

 

Flash burn is not fun.

 

Thanks guys. I'm just happy it isn't permanent. And no i don't ever want to experience flash burn again. And Mark thanks for the props. my dads idea was to just make a whole new carrier but i didn't want to go through all that. I thought of the reinforcement and he agreed that it would work.

 

I'm glad you didn't have permanent eye damage, Richard. Hoping you'll feel better soon.

Good reinforcement job on that carrier. However, did you consider putting a reinforcing plate on top? That's where tension (metal pulling apart) is highest.


Richard and guys,
Regarding thickness of the bumpers? Do you think 1/4" is absolutely necessary. Has anybody had experience with thinner, say 3/16" or 1/8"? That, plus the structure of the bumper would still be significantly stronger than stock.

Re: Thickness of tire carrier frame,
Would you agree that 1/16" is good, and just need reinforcement like Richard did for the horizontal member itself?

 

Ray 3/16" is perfect thickness. 1/4 is really heavy duty but I think its much too thick. Most fabricators use 3/16" and they hold up very well. Red wagon hit his rear bumper a bunch of times too and he didn't get any dents in the bumper either. If I could redo my rear I would have definitely gone 3/16. Its lighter. The only reason I used 1/4" for my rear was because that's all I had available to me at that steel shop. Only other option would have been to buy a huge sheet of 3/16 plate steel and that wiukd have been much too much for my project. So I stuck to the scrap metal section and only bought 1/4".

As for the plate on the top side of where the tension is dude I didn't even think about that. Youre right that'd probably be better.

 

RAD, I wouldn't use anything less than 1/8 inch on any part of a bumper, structural, supports, swing out. You will not save enough weight to matter and the weld has nothing to penetrate. I like to use 3/16 for most everything I do like this, its a good compromise between weight and strength. Jmtc.

Sorry to hear about your eyes Richard, I've done that to myself a few times, I'm a lot more careful in my old age Lol.
The fix on the carrier looks good, spread the force of the joints over as large of area as you can.

 

glad to hear your eyes are doing better ive gotten half face sunburns helping kris weld more than once also hand an arm sunburns as well the meds i take make me more sensitive to UV

i agree i was thinking the same way as RAD of putting a plate cross the top where the pull is but bending the end over the back of the carrier (L shaped) an welding the perimeter

 

YEP!

Richard,
3/16" is just perfect for off-road use. For L.A. traffic your 1/4" is best LOL!

 

Glad the eyes feel better. Now you know better.

Good to see the carrier fixed with no drama.

 

^^^^ yes OR you need to increase the gusset under the tire mount.

I did this to mine: