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Are you planning on a rear bumper at all? I'am getting ready to do my rear bumper before the front(since i ripped off the old one while playing in the woods) and am trying to wrap my head around designing the rear mounts.
Ok... So I've put off posting about my bumper for some reason or another, but want to kind of give some feed back as to how I built it.
I built my bumper back in 2010ish maybe first of 2011 I didn't like how the bumpers that were out took the stock tow hooks away which to me didn't seem like the best idea. I wanted something that looked good but didn't take to much away from the truck. I came up with an image i wanted to go with that flowed well and added on from there. I will have to give my father some credit for helping me get this thing going and added a few ideas on how to get started.
I only used a few tools that are pretty easy to find and fairly easy to use.
Some of them include: welder, plasma cutter, grinder, wire brush, drill, drill bits, wrenches to take stock bumper off and put the new one on, tape measure, some cardboard, a few sharpies, quarters, string, pipe stands, ply wood, cheap pipe bender, black tape, and some synthetic sand.
Ok for the start and yes I pretty much suck for write ups.... I'm a little scatter brained.
Here is what the original idea was going to be:
Then after that look I tried to closely match it. Not having a little welding or plasma cutter at my personal house I started this project back at the parents.
This is where the ol' man comes into play for helping me with starting off. I took off the stock bumper and found what I was going to be working with. So I made plates to work off:
The easiest way I could think of how to "jig" up haha was with stands and ply wood. I used one of my HID lights and put on the ply wood where I wanted it placed compared to the rest of the truck. I then took a string and quarters and marked where I was going to put bends in the pipe with my cheap harbor freight bender.
Like this:
Then once I had it marked out I started bending the top pipe to fit the line:
Once the top pipe had all the correct bends in it to match the line that was made I took out the ply wood and had the pipe stands hold the pipe in place for attachment points to be made:
Then cut out some cardboard for a template to make the actual plate metal for the attachment point:
Ones your pipe is welded to the the attachment plates you can fill the side plates in. I used more cardboard to get a good match to the rest of it:
Once they are all on there thats when I put in a draw bar to hang the lights from on the back side of the 2" main frame pipe:
Then after that I drilled holes for the lights, but making sure I had room for my upright 1" bars I started on the top baja looking bar:
This is the bender I used and to make the bends not deform I filled it with bauxite due to sand was crushing on the 2" main bar and the angles weren't near as much. The 4130 chromoly pipe was that strong:
Here it is tacked up to the 2":
After that is attached I started to finish it out with the support 1" bars to the upper loop:
I welded in tabs for the skid plate and cut it out to fit flush but don't really have good pics of that. Also, I put in a brace bar from the outer edge back to the frame to really add strength to the front end. Once that was all finished I sanded it down and just spray painted it before powdercoat just to make sure i didn't want to change something about it.
Here it is before paint: