New FJC rear bumper

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Dude that sucks. But at the same time, excelent test for your bumper. Looking forward to pics.


I hope Drew didn't sustain any permanent damage.
 
I met with Drew today, and as expected he was a little beaten up but as always in good spirits. The truck and the bumper I have to admit I was shocked by.
Now take into consideration the situation that was around the accident:
Drew was stopped at an intersection, a full size Dodge Ram 4X4 (new style) was behind him and a Hyndai Tucson that was travelling 50km/hr (likely more) hit the Dodge which hit Drew and pushed him about 10 feet.
the dodge ended up getting lifted up as the Hyndai went under the truck and went right into the FJC, hitting the tire and swing out with most of the force and even going under the FJC bumper a bit. The tire hit the grill of the Ram square on. I was expecting the worse.
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We measured everything expecting to find something broken or cracked or bent, there were clear signs that the impact caused the bumper swing out to flex and impact the door slightly and now was actually about 1/4"-3/8" in further than before. We measure everything and looked at all angles and the only thing I was able to find was that the back of the frame (the section inside the mounting of the bumper) was ever so slightly bent, we're talking less than 1/16" in the upper direction causing the swing out to be a little closer to the door. This was a side effect of the impact being fairly high on the bumper and pushing it up wards.
No damage was found in the spindle! No damage was found in the bearings! No damage was found in the latching mechanism! or anywhere else on the entire swing out and bumper assembly! we need a new antenna mount, some paint for the scratches and a new 7 pin plug.
This was a great, sad and unintentional, test of the single swing out with the extra beefy 2000lbs rated spindle swing out and my special heavy duty - easy open/close latching mechanism. I'm pretty sure if it can take a beating from a Dodge it can handle your trail abuse. As for the frame, the bend is so small and almost not noticeable that it will never affect the handling, performance and strength of the truck.
My bumper - 1 point, Dodge and Hyndai - 0
take that ARB!
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AMAZING! Awesome bumper. Sad to hear of the accident, but truly amazing at the small amount of damage that the FJC sustained!
 
wow, I want to see pics of the dodge and hyundai!

Sorry about the ding though! Good testing grounds I guess, gotta love driver/texters.

That bumper rocks, i think it just made fjcruisers everywhere a little bit less un-cool. :p
 
Mat, What is the status of the business of making these? It's been 1 1/2+ years from the last post.

If you're still fabbing these, what is the weight and is there any pricing? If you can't post please PM.

Again if you're still fabbing, has anyone requested a double swing out for two tires?

Gary
 
As it stands this and any other projects I have been doing are indefinitely suspended.
Life took a different course and a work injury (the regular day time job) caused me to have to retrain and now I'm back at school. Add to that a different line of work that presented itself and for at least the next 1.5 years I won't even try to fire up the business because I realize that I wouldn't be able to devote any time to it.
Sorry.
 
Sucks about the injury, but I hope the door that it opened leads to only a better life for you in the future.

That was a kick ass bumper though.

Gary

BTW "I know a short cut" brings back so many good memories of my late uncle Bud. Whenever he said that, I knew I was in for a very interesting day. Great guy and saw so much of eastern oregon because of him.
 
Thanks Gary,
it did suck but in the long run it turned out to be a good thing - not the injury, but what it sparked.
I was not entirely happy where I worked because my talents and skills were being wasted. Now I go to school and got to work on designing parts for prototype aircraft projects - so things went well, although I seem to have a nasty habit of overbuilding things and keep having to make things lighter - go figure.
I really liked that bumper too and as soon as things slow down and I get out of school I plan on picking up where I left off because no matter what I am doing (as a day time job) I love creating things out of metal and desiging new and interesting projects just like that one.
One thing I have learned while doing those projects is that I will never get rich at it, in fact I just manage to pay for my time and on some jobs even a little less. I put a lot of time into the details and making sure everything is done just right, one of the reasons why I would never let anything I design be mass produced, it just would not have the same finish and attention to detail.
One of these days I'll be back in full force.
 
Just read through the build- one word Superb! I ended up with an LoD and the quality while on the surface was decent, the space outs and fitting was off creating a lot of adaptations to make work. Its nice to see craftsmanship

Thanks for sharing

-Alex
 
Thanks for the compliments. I've always strived to make things for others the way I make them for myself: do it once, do it right, make it for life.
Sadly life isn't allowing me to focus on that line of work right now, but with any luck I'll be back to it soon enough.
 
tough situation....excellent work on the bumper though.
 
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