After designing and building my own, i would have much rather gone this route. For guys who think 2k+ on slee rear bumper is too much, its 1,000 in materials, design and free cutting out and my own labor for welding/grinding/assembly. Not to mention powdercoat. But at least i can call it “mine”(im over that already haha).
April 2018 4x4Labs Rear Bumper group buy
- Thread starter shibubba
- Start date
This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, Skimlinks, and others.
I'm in Corvallis. I have access to a commercial address or I can come to Salem to pick it up.
Gonna get the gas / water can carrier kit. Maybe a couple other accessories. Just finished welding, powder coating, installing the rear bumper kit I bought like 2 years ago!
How difficult of a project is it to weld these kits? I have zero experience but want to learn, obviously I'd practice before jumping into the bumpers. I could justify the savings buying the kits to get a Millermatic 211.
My second welding project ever. Used a MIG Miller 215 on 120V line. Made lots of mistakes, but it looks semi OK unless you're a weld Nazi. So more or less I'm in your shoes and it turned out so my thoughts are go for it. You can always grind out and reweld. I wasn't too picky, didn't need perfection. From what I've learned I would say metal prep is where I tended to have problems. You want to clean and grind to get to clean fresh metal; always. Wouldn't hurt to practice on scrap quite a bit. Torch angle and hand position mean a lot and more than I knew when I started. It took me decent parts of about 5 weekends. A lot of that was confusion as I worked my way through fitting, grinding, tacking etc. I learned to watch more than just the puddle and to frame the puddle into a context of stuff about 4" around it. Learned that I was holding the arc too long out and to keep it tighter to the puddle. Stuff all experienced welders know but I was reading a book and then welding, read more, weld, start to see my errors, read in the book how to fix that issue. I'm happy with the result. After this bumper I'm starting to grab the welder all the time to make solutions for stuff in the shop and on the 80 and that's the best part. Now I have the power to fabricate stuff the way I want it.
I'm am definitely in! Thanks for organizing!
Just ordered a rear bumper kit!
brian
SILVER Star
how long is this open?
Did Luke indicate how long the wait times were? I don't want to bug him if you already asked. Thanks!
Ordered rear kit! Thanks again.
I'm outside of Seattle, and will be ordering a rear--lmk if anyone wants to try and combine shipping
If you've never welded before, I wouldn't start with the rear bumper. There are too many parts of this bumper that have to be welded correctly for safety reasons. At least have someone with experience shadow you if you can.
I am finishing my rear bumper kit up this weekend. I have clean, solid welds from a Miller 135 (120v). HOWEVER...if I had it to do over again, I would go through the trouble (not really, just time) of pulling a 240v outlet and borrowing a machine. The thickness of the recovery points and swing arm spindles are the reason why. I wound up having to preheat everything for a good 5 minutes before welding to ensure penetration. Even at that, I needed to stack 3 welds on the recovery points to feel comfortable (using .030). I also had to stack welds between the bumper shell and sides due to a pretty large gap as well. Used some 1/4" square tubing on the inside of the bumper to fill and then welded.
I plan to start with the spindles this weekend and am going to attempt some fluxcore .035 wire and turn off the 75/25. We shall see how messy things get.
Does anyone have a picture of this cut flares thing? That may be the way to go for me.
