Rear bumper wings (1 Viewer)

[PIG PUNISHER]

Cut out and bent the pieces for the cooler rack. I will work on welding it in this weekend along with all the gussets I plan to add.

 

[JeepinPete]

I missed this earlier. Love the use of aluminum, except for the swing arms. Mild steel and 6061 AL has similar strengths, but the issue is the inherent stiffness of aluminum. Going off of memory, it is roughly 1/3 as stiff as steel. Yield strength or ultimate strength have no bearing on this property. Typical steel arms wiggle, aluminum will wiggle more if built the same. You can certainly be successful, just know it will take more bracing than your typical steel swing arm.

 

[PIG PUNISHER]

I will be adding bracing this weekend for the tire swing arm as well as the bumper wings back to the frame. It does currently wiggle but mast steel set ups I have seen have a similar wiggle to them. It is fully supported in the closed position so I am not too worried about the stress on the 1 1/4 bolt. If this doesn’t work out it will be easy enough to modify.
I have built several aluminum front bumpers with winches in them as well as skid plates and belly pans that have all held up very well to trail abuse but those don’t have moving parts so this has been somewhat of a challenge. That is what makes it fun though.

 

[JeepinPete]

I'm looking forward to see your end product!

 

[PIG PUNISHER]

Thanks

 

[PIG PUNISHER]

So. I haven’t taken many pictures but I am close to being done. I gusseted the wings and the swing arms. Added some turnbuckles to hold down the cooler and quit for the night. I got rid of most of the wiggle. I’m pretty happy with how this turned out. I still have to weld in plates to cover the square tube openings and paint it. I’m also going to go ahead and make provisions for a rear winch but it may be a while until I can pony up for a new front winch and put the current harbor freight 12k I the rear.
I did tie the two sides together which helped to stiffen things up. Once it’s all black I think it will look pretty good. I have no worries about it holding up to trail abuse but the cooler rack may contact the lift gate. We shall see

 

[PIG PUNISHER]

A few thoughts on this project. This took a good many hours. Probably 20+. My goal was to make a functional rear bumper with swingouts with mostly scrap I had collected over time. All of the aluminum that I used was scrap that I had collected and stored. The only things I had to purchase for this build was a hitch pin some bolts and a toggle latch that I have yet to install. All in all I think this effort was successful. It may not have been the best way to do some of the things I did but again the goal was to use scrap material. Maybe I should have made that more clear from the beginning. I will post some more pictures after clean up and paint and answer any questions you all may have. Time to hit the trails and see how it holds up.

 

[Wrencher93]

Sorry if you mentioned this already, but what kind of welder are you using? Stick? MIG? I already have bumpers but I'm interested in building some odds and ends out of aluminum and I was wondering if you found welding the thicker aluminum plate to be difficult.

 

[Road Apple]

Looks really nice. Great fab work !! Like that you put this together with scrap that you collected.

 

[PIG PUNISHER]

Sorry if you mentioned this already, but what kind of welder are you using? Stick? MIG? I already have bumpers but I'm interested in building some odds and ends out of aluminum and I was wondering if you found welding the thicker aluminum plate to be difficult.

I used a Hobart handler 190 with a spool gun. It’s a pretty good setup for occasional aluminum welding. The welder itself is great but the spool gun is kinda cheap and jams a lot.