plate bumper build... or another way to waste tons of time.

[v7guy]

Building a winch bumper. I got more than 15 hrs in at this point... 5 was building the foam board mock up. It's 18 pieces per side and I'm getting ready to go out and start cutting the steel. I tried to make it relatively short but there's only so much you can do when there's a winch bolted to the bumper. I'm going to put weld through shackle mounts around the frame rail area. For mounting, right now I'm using the stock bolts. I may also put a hole sideways through the frame rail. I think my biggest concern at the moment is cooling, it's why the center is relatively open and also security of the bumper and winch. The winch bolts through from the bottom, but the bumper being held on by two exposed bolts makes me a bit nervous. Any thoughts?

[The Roadie]

Has more facets than an F117. Cool.

[fishsticks]

That's a lot of plates.




Just sayin....

[v7guy]

Damn Donny, you're killing me with that ebay post. I just left the welding store without some O/A tanks after I got some more welding wire cause i've spent too much this month. A cutting tip on the O/A would do a decently quick job. But I've got a lot of 4.5 wheels sitting on the pegboard... Then again I am going to be using like $2000 dollars in wheels for the 4.5 while cutting all this, maybe I should get a cheap plasma . lol #gearhead logic
I cut for awhile, then got irritated and went inside.
I gotta drive the misses to work in a few hours. Gonna take a nap, take a drive, and see how long it takes to overheat my grinder while I'm cutting plate. I'd really like to drive to work this weekend with a front bumper. That means it needs done tomorrow. Don't know if I can pull it off, but I'm gonna try.

Got a kick out of the F117 reference. lol

[bartonmd]

Man, that is really cool looking, but it is going to be a TON of work! I call "no way" on getting it done, today, unless you borrow a plasma and have a professional grade welder with 100% duty cycle at 19V. With as hot as it is, even a MM211 like I used to have is only ~20% duty cycle at 19V, and you will want to, of course, seam weld it all, inside and out. Plus, there's a ton of inside radii on the outside there, that are a P-I-T-A-! to blend and make look right. The payoff is that it will look really fachin' cool, but that's a TON of work!

The "H" under the winch and the 1" lip at the rear, like we talked about, are definitely making that 3/16" winch plate strong enough!

The only things I'd add is where you've got around the sides of the frame boxed like we talked about, I'd also go all the way across the bottom. I know that makes you hack on and re-weld your radiator skid a bit, but it'll make the bottom of the bumper stronger, and I watched Regulator smack that front, bottom corner HARD on a rock, and his just deformed the corner of the weld a little bit, and didn't bend anything. The other thing would be a 1/2" reaward flange on the whole fairlead mount, so it doesn't flex as much.

I don't mean for this to sound like it's going to sound, but I'm not sure how much finish grinding/blending you've done. The outside seam blending can be the difference between a professional job and a hack-looking "I made this at home" job. The secret to it is holding the grinder at the angle of the first side, and grinding the weld down flush, then holding it at the angle of the joining piece, and grinding that side down flush. This will leave you with sort of an uneven, pointed ridge, in the middle. You then take the grinder back and forth across the length of the ridge, at different angles with each sweep, until you have the radius that you want. Do the rough grinding with a grinding wheel, then finish it off and blend it all with a flap disk sanding wheel. 60-grit works well. They're $7-$9 locally, or you can get them from Roark Supply, by putting in the code "GRIT" at checkout, for $1.89 each (http://www.roarksupply.com/4-1-2-Zircon ... pdiscs.htm). That's where I get mine, and they work as well and last as long or longer than the $8 ones that you get from Lowe's.

That bumper will use at LEAST 3-4 flap disks, and probably 8-9 regular aluminum oxide grinding wheels, or 1-2 of the Norzon Plus zirconia grinding wheels I use (but the Zirconia wheels cut like 2-3x as fast, so you have to be careful with them). Roark has the Norton Gemini wheels for $1.97 each, which is a steal, and they're a good, mid-grade wheel. They don't cut as fast as the Norzon Plus or last as long, but they are SOOO much better in both life and cutting speed than the $2 wheels you get at the local TSC/Menards. Time and number of wheels depends on your welds, and how much grinding you need to do. I don't even want to imagine how many cutoff wheels you're going to use cutting it all up, but you probably won't be far off purchasing the $279 plasma that Donny linked (though the US made cutoff wheels are $1.69 at Roark Supply)...

Flap disc:


Mike

[Mudwheelin]

Looking REALLY good so far. I like the design.

[v7guy]

Thanks Mike, I used a similar combination of grinding wheels and flap disks to pretty up the weld at the fairlead mount, the technique you mentioned seemed to work best. Good to know I'm going about it the best way... I really was wondering if I was just pissin in the wind or not. I came to the conclusion this morning that this probably wasn't going to get finished today. The grinder gets so hot that I can't hold it after a dozen long cuts(both the Dewalt and the cheapo harbor freight one). Last night I also came to realize that I'm going to end up cutting off the whole front mounting plate of the rad skid that I spent a billion hours clearancing for the stock bumper. lol So far I've been welding the front and back of everything and I figure I'll stick with that method.
I'll also make sure I weld a plate across to link the frame mounts together. When you talk about a lip on the fairlead you're talking about the top edge?
Do you have any suggestions on how to keep each side even while I'm welding all the pieces together? I've been using the arrow shaped magnets to this point but a lot of those angles aren't going to lend themselves to that method.
I have to work all weekend so I'll go ahead and order some supplies from Roark. Really appreciate the discount code. They sound vaguely familiar... Don't they have a thread over on pirate?
Like I mentioned previously, I don't think anything suggested is going to get me bent out of shape. I'm definitely a FNG with this fab stuff and realize it. I'll take all the advice I can get, and I'll appreciate it! I'm always looking for a better technique or an easier method.


I've been through about a dozen cut off wheels, 2grinding disks and finished off one flap disk to get to this point. I've got about a dozen more cut off disks and 4 or 5 grinding disks left and one flap wheel. Taking slower cuts seem to help the life of the cut off wheels a lot and the grinders don't get as hot as quick but it still takes forever. My welder is an old LE SP150. It's 220, but it has the old wire feed system that has trouble feeding the wire when you get it a funny position. There doesn't seem to be any good/easy way to do this. Guess I'm just paying my dues here. If I keep building stuff like this maybe I'll invest in some more tools, but for now I'm gonna make do with what I have. I don't think most people realize the massive amount of work that goes into this stuff, I know i didn't, but I'm having a good time.

Thanks for the compliments guys. Hope it looks as good in steel as it does in foamboard!

[bartonmd]

Yes, the 1/2" flange along the top edges of the fairlead mount.

Yeah, Roarksupply is a vendor over at Pirate.

OK, yeah, you'll be at 20% or less duty cycle to weld the 3/16" with that welder. You'll likely be turned all the way up on your voltage, with solid wire and gas. Nice full featured little welder, though!

When doing stuff like this, I usually tack everything up, then do REALLY good tacks and add some cross-braces on things (on the inside), before I take the thing off the vehicle, to really weld on it. In particular, between your base and the under-headlight pieces, and between the headlight pieces and the "wings". When I have it off, I tack it up really well on the whole inside of the bumper. With the thickness of the material, when you do good tacks on inside and outside of everything, it usually holds shape pretty well. I then weld a seam at a time, alternating sides, alternating front and back sides of the bumper, and it comes out the same shape I took it off the vehicle.

Mike

[Trail X]

A stealth bumper, nice! You must love making work for yourself.

Are you planning to tack it together on the vehicle? That might be the best way to keep it straight, so long as you have a flat surface, like a garage floor, under the vehicle to use as a reference datum. Tack, measure, and if it's a little off just bang/bend it into shape.

For the front fairlead, you'll probably be ok with just the two gussets behind the fairing. Most of the stress from the fairlead is transferred right into those two mounting bolts. My winch plate doesn't even have gussets... just two tiny fingers that stick up to grab the bolts. Granted, mine's 1/4", but I'm not sure a flange is really necessary Mike.

[bartonmd]

I just have gussets coming up on either side of mine, as well, but it's also 1/4". The 3/16" thick ones I've done have wanted to move around a bit along the length, so I just put a 1/2" flange up there, which stiffens it up, and makes it look much more finished than just a piece of steel sticking up. Strength-wise, a couple gussets up next to, or up to the mounting bolts would make it strong enough, though.

ETA: I find that since vehicles don't all sit level and such, that it's much better to measure off of the vehicle than the floor.

Mike

[v7guy]

Made a decent order with Roark, looking forward to a couple pair of unbreakable safety glasses.
I figured while I'm off Tuesday and Wednesday I should be able to bolt the winch plate back on the trailblazer and start cutting and welding. After my experience with the rad plate i think I'll just build it on the truck. I shouldn't have any trouble getting at least 12 hours in. We'll see how it goes. I'm. Pretty excited to get back to work on it.

[HARDTRAILZ]

Nice.

[v7guy]

Got these in today...

[DirtyBacon04]

Quite an assortment of misc things in the background... Guitar Hero, Robot Vacuum, Crutches, and Dog/baby toys...

[v7guy]

Quite an assortment of misc things in the background... Guitar Hero, Robot Vacuum, Crutches, and Dog/baby toys...

Welcome to my living room, I'm not all that capable of moving from it now.
I tore my Achilles tendon and ruptured part of my calf yesterday (according to a sonogram at the ER). Still waiting for the MRI results, basically i can't really move my right foot or put any weight on it. I have surgery scheduled for the 17th.
I was pushing the firebird a few feet forward after pushing it back in the driveway and heard a loud pop. I thought my sandle broke, but it was my tendon. My foot was suddenly floppy and I got cold and sick. On my way to the ground I pulled the e brake in the bird. Then stared at my sandal and realized it didn't break and I didn't slip. Then I felt my Achilles and it was all soft like a noodle under the skin. I had a pretty good idea what happened at that point. Got up on my left foot a couple times and got more nauseous/light headed. I realized I wasn't moving myself so I called for some help.
Supposedly I'm looking at 3 weeks before I get out of a splint and into a solid boot. I'm hoping at that point i can move around enough to start working on it here and there. But we'll see. For now I'm eating percocet and it's sort of taking the edge off. Aches real bad. I asked the doc if I could've prevented it somehow and he told me no, sometimes they just rip.

Still waiting for the shackle mounts from TMR and my order from Roark. But I'm not going to be finishing this for a few weeks and I'd imagine most of the pics posted in the near future are going to be from this position. Can't wait to take pics of the shackle mounts and the order from Roark! It's the biggest thing I have to look forward to at the moment.

Sorry for the delay guys. I'll get this bitch done soon and show you all how to do it the hard way in true v7guy fashion!

[snowmirage]

Dam man that sucks, don't rush getting back to the truck it'll be waiting for you. Believe me last thing you want to do is rush and make things worse in the long wrong.

I shattered (more like exploded) both bones in my left leg years ago was in a full leg cast for 3 months then I had to have surgery they re-broke it and put on this giant external fixater had that for over a year. So I've been there it can be a nightmare, just have to try to find something to take your mind off of it.

Best of luck with the recovery our prayers are with ya man.

[v7guy]

Got my shackle mounts in today from TMR as well as a big ole box of flap wheels, grinding/cutting disks and other misc materials from Roark. The cut off wheels were 10 cents more a piece than their overseas counterpart but I couldn't resist buying a US made item since it was available.

[Shdwdrgn]

How's the ankle healing up? Any more work done on the bumper? I've been working on my own this Summer, gone through about 40 cutoff wheels and 3 grinding discs. I picked mine up from Harbor Freight - about $8 for a 10-pack of cutoff wheels. Certainly a lot better than the local box stores selling them for $3-4 each!

I'm curious how you work out the proper support for the winch shelf? I have my eye on an 8500# Rugged Ridge to get some day, trying to make sure my bumper has good bracing before I paint it.

[Gordinho80]

Yeah,,, whats the status???

[bartonmd]

How's the ankle healing up? Any more work done on the bumper? I've been working on my own this Summer, gone through about 40 cutoff wheels and 3 grinding discs. I picked mine up from Harbor Freight - about $8 for a 10-pack of cutoff wheels. Certainly a lot better than the local box stores selling them for $3-4 each!.

FWIW, $2.50 Dewalt cutoff wheels at Lowe's last 3-4x as long, and cut twice as fast as the HF cutoff wheels, if you use them right.

Mike