Finished my first bumper today. It was for my brother's 87 Turbo. I'll post pics as soon as i get them (camera is MIA). I'm sure it'll look pretty crude to most of you, but i'm proud of it, since it's the first thing i've fabbed entirely on my own. I had trouble not wiggling the torch on the turn signal holes, and so those look a bit sloppy. I'm still trying to clean them up with a file. I wish i could afford a plasma cutter. I now completely understand the amount of money people charge for their bumpers, MAN, what a ton of work. Very satisfying though. Well, pics to come soon.

 

pics

http://ucsu.colorado.edu/~vimonti/bump.html

More to come soon. The flash wasn't working very well, so most of them didn't turn out very well, these two sort of turned out.

 

it has nice semi-stock look to it. great job for your first one! nice work.

 

Thanks man. i wanted it to not look redneck, like the bumper on my truck. It'll hold the weight of the truck on a high lift jack, which was another requirement. Now i just want to see how the skid plate works on the front. We wheeled it today, but not where we wanted to (road still closed), so we just poked around. I have more pics, but gotta wait for CD to get developed.

 

No other feedback?

 

I think the other feed back is now waiting on more pics.... I like the semi stock look also....

 

Yeah, well the photo shop screwed up and my film didn't get sent out. I'm so pissed. I'll be adding the new pics soon. Sorry about that.

 

Definitle impressive for the first go. Definitely put up more pics when you can.

 

I should have them by tonight.

 

excellent job! You learn a lot from building your own bumper, things you wish you could have changed, things that worked out better than expected, and just how hard it is to do. Indeed, when I built my own from bumper, I quickly came to the realization why people pay big bucks for tube bumpers. There is a lot of R & D that goes into mass production, Schaefer can tell you about that one, and then the material and labor to do it. Ton of work.

Great job on your 1st bumper. Before long, you'll be looking at it, finding ways to improve it, or make a better one next time. At least I was with mine.

 

ADDED NEW PICS!!! They are from when we went wheeling the day after. Got some good shots, but the camera's focus was way off. Not sure what happened, but you get the general idea.

Yeah, i learned a TON. I do really like a couple features. I like that i decided to put the blinkers inside the bumper, and i like the front skid. The front skid should help if he nose dives the truck to slide him forward, instead of digging in. I would change the ends. Right now, we are probably going to put back on the stock ends of the bumper, but i should have added them out of steel. I also should have welded on some mounts for Dring shackles.

 

Dring mounts are nice but be sure that your bumper mounts are beefy enough to take it. Can't see from your pics how the bumper attaches to the crossmember that is bolted to the front of the frame. The main concern would be if the dring mounts are too high from the bumper mounts. If they are, during a yank they can try and bend the bumper down.

I have the same problem with my bumper since it is so high in order to hide the body lift. All the calculations I have done run suggest the bumper will bend over under a normal tug. Not cool.

Also, personally I'd used rectangular tube rather than c-channel. It costs more but offers much greater bending stiffness to twisting.

Cheers. Keep up the fun stuff.
Geoff

 

It attaches there and on the two brackets above the cross member. So, 4 bolts total. It won't bend forward too easily, but you are probably right, the dring shackles are too much I have rectangular tubing on my 4Runner. It's okay, but even though the strength is there, it looks bad. Plus it is a PITA to get bolts into. Thanks for the feed back man. I appreciate it.

 

Bump.

 

Looks great, real clean. Only thing I would do is add a cap on the c-channel ends...good job!

 

Cap the ends and angle them out a little /-------\ like this but flush


Good job

 

Yeah, The caps are coming, but not sure exactly how i want to do them yet. Thanks for the coments.

 

Cap the ends and join the top with some black diamond plate.

 

The ends are capped with the stock caps.

Thought about Diamond plate, but it's too expensive.

Pics of how it looks now:

 

bump for edit