well its time to say goodbye to my old bumper:


it did its job well, it pushed many many trees out of the way, and kept the headlights intact. it also held the winch to recover myself and others.

now that i have access to nicer tools and my skills have improved, its time for a new one that tucks the winch in closer to the grille.

so free to a good home. come pick it up and its yours.

now, on to the new bumper. i hate ARB and TJM style bumpers. they stick out too far and they weigh too much. thats just the way i feel. i prefer tube.

here is what i have so far:


simple blunt stinger and winch plate so far. the winch plate sits directly on top of the factory front x-member



the rear winch bolts go all the way through the front spring hanger, the factory x-member and then through the winch plate before reaching the winch. (drilling those holes was not fun)

this moves the winch back over 4 inches from its previous location.

as you can see above (sorry about the dark pics) i had to cut out some of the grille support and i will have to remove the integrated winch solenoid and mount it under the hood. i machined two peices of rod to serve as spacers for the top of the winch where the solenoid once sat.

i also picked up a synthetic winch rope from rockstomper.com:


i will update this thread as i make more progress

 

Very nice, its pretty much exactly where i am going to be mounting mine, im just debating wether or not i should push the radiator back as well.

 

Ahhh yet another to fall to the stinger craze.....

ill be intrested to see what you wind up with for a finished bumper

 

pushing the rad back wouldnt be necessarily a bad idea if you have an electric fan, especially one you could mount high on the front.

its not so much a "stinger" as it is a "middle hoop" i am going to have a hoop on each side to protect the headlights and fenders

 

today i whipped up a quick hawse type fairlead and remounted and wired the winch. i sprayed my current progress with some paint because its snowing outside.



here you can see just how tight the bumper is, once again, to get it back any further means moving the radiator

 

I like where you are going with this.
Keep the pics coming

 

very nice. i am going to have to figre something out for mounting the old winch i got. but i just learned how to weld so i dont know if i trust myself with a couple hundre dollars of tubeing.

 

if that is the case, order a bumper in kit form

 

what bender are you using?

 

more progress today


sorry again for the dark pic, ill get some in the daylight tomorrow.

i couldnt come up with headlight hoops that:
1) i liked
2) allowed me to change headlights
3) wouldnt piss me off when trying to access things under the hood

so at this point im not sure if i am going to put some on there. i guess that would mean it is a stinger after all

the bender is a one-shot bender with an air over hydraulic cylinder. i cant remember the brand right off hand.

 

one-shot is made by pto-tools.

cool. can it do 180 deg?

 

nope, not a pro tools, that i do know, its made by a company in iowa. the max is 110* i believe. that is the only downside, but there are few uses for a 180 bend anyway

 

Dangit! You couldn't have posted this earlier?

I had already started building my bumper when you started this thread and I like how easy it is to access your winch. I would have stolen your design. Good job.

Is the winch plate and tube supported underneath? If not, it looks like if you have an up or down pull it might bend it.

 

oh well pro-tools makes one called a one-shot...

 

the winch plate is welded to the x-member at the rear and the tube adds rigidity to the front of the plate.

i have considered making a brace out of 3/4" plate that goes from the bottom of the winch plate to the front x-member(s) and drilling it for use as a recovery point

 

Do you still have the old one? I would like it if you do.

 

I definately think you should triangulated the winch plate. It won't hold up to a worst case scenerio of a downward pull, like if you're stuck on a steep obstacle and need to be winch over it.

3/4" inch plate?! Wow, that's some pretty thick plate you got there.

 

i put the winch rope on today.

3/4" plate is what we usually use for recovery shackle mounts, so thats probably what we have lying around and thus i will use. if you notice the tube on the front of the plate triangulates it some so i doubt it would move, but i like having a recovery point up front so i will kill 2 birds with one stone

 

wow... keep up the good work... im thinking you should brace the winch fairing lead

 

def. like it better than the first one. good work.