I do have a 1/4" plate that the winch mounts to. That is probably 20+. It is 10" wide and the width of the frame
I do have a 1.5" body lift so mine is a little taller. I cut the frame rails angled from the front top back about 40* down and back. There are three bolt holes so I cut the front one off the rear two will be plenty.
I also love your rear bumper I started building one following your lines. With a wing that kicks up to account for the body lift
I do have a 1/4" plate that the winch mounts to. That is probably 20+. It is 10" wide and the width of the frame
I do have a 1.5" body lift so mine is a little taller. I cut the frame rails angled from the front top back about 40* down and back. There are three bolt holes so I cut the front one off the rear two will be plenty.
I also love your rear bumper I started building one following your lines. With a wing that kicks up to account for the body lift
I will be cutting the frame at an angle as well. I will loose one of the bottom 3 holes but as you stated, two should be good for the bottom. I will also loose one of the top 3 holes (the very front one) because the tube goes right over it. I think with two of the tow hook bolts on top and two of the tow hook bolts on bottom and with the 3 bumper bolts on the side (giving me 7 grade 10.9 bolts on each side) I should have plenty of strength for winch and shackle pulling. My computer verfied that fact as well.
Well, I FINALLY got some time to start building the bumper. I had thought I would have started weeks ago, but I have just been way too busy to get anything started until recently. I am about 1/2 done at this point. This coming weekend I plan to finish the fab work and tacking it all together. The following weekend I plan to remove it finish weld it all up, grind it, prime, and paint. I really need to finish this completely by the weekend after next since I have a camping/wheelin trip the next week. Here's some pics in order. The first one show the 18" harbor hitch tube I purchased. I cut off a 6" piece to use later as part of the frame mount. The rest got used as the hitch reciever. I cut the tube in half giving me two pieces of 1/4" "L" metal which gave me the top and bottom of the frame mounts. Once I had the frame mounts (homemade "L" metal) in place and the holes drilled I tacked it together and then cut out some small pieces to box it all in.
Here's a couple more pics of the frame mounts. Don't give me any craap about my welds. I'm not a fabricator; I'm a teacher and am using the terrible $90 Harbor Freight Flux/Mix welder. It's ugly but gets the job done for my small needs.
Here's how it looks now. I got the main tube bent and tacked on. I still need to add the lower angled supports and the upper stinger with headlight protection bars. That will hopefully all get bent and installed this weekend. You may notice that I am keeping the bumper close to the body. I'm not a fan of the tube/stinger style bumpers that stick way out in front. I understand they do that to clearance a winch, but I'm not running a winch directly mounted to the bumper so there was no need to have the bumper stick way out.
If there is any socal guys somewhat in or near the IE that would like to come out and help me finish the fab work; I could definitely use the help. My HF tube bender is a huge PITA when your alone. An extra set of hands makes it WAY easier to use. I will be working on the bumper from about 8-3ish. I have a 5pm wedding I have to be at. I'm up in the San Berdu mtns. between Big Bear and Yucaipa off hwy 38.
I was farting around in CAD and decided to build a rough mock up of my winch and universal mount. I also built some shackles to see the finished look. Here you go.
I got a little more work done yesterday. You will notice I have one more piece to go. I came up 8" short on tubing to add the last piece around the passenger side head light. I am a little pissed at myself for not ordering extra. I now have the entire day off and the wife gave me the green light to work on it all day and I'm out of material. All I can do is remove it from the frame and weld up the backside of everything. I will pick up the last of the tubing tomorrow when the metal shop is open and use next weekend to get this 100% done. Here's as of this morning.
I also had to bend the lower right piece around the ac drier/canister. I know some guys have relocated it, but I had bent the pipes so many times to find a good spot I was afraid they were just too weak to be bent again. I also kept everything real tight to the body. My rule was that I wanted to be able to slide my fingers between the tubing and body and nothing more. This would allow for some flex and deflection on rocks but not stick out in any unnecesary way.
Finals are this week and the bumper design was one of the options for their final project. I have around 8 or 9 kids who took the project to the end. I will post up their designs in my other thread at the end of the week. A few so far are pretty good (considering this is a freshman age class of 14-15 year olds). There are also a few that lack any real fucntion; but look cool. Then there is a couple where your just left scratching your head.
They definately had a good time with the project. The issue is that none of them have ANY fabrication experience; so they don't quite understand what can and can't be done with a basic tube bender and welder. Next year I will be adding a unit in welding and fabrication so they can finally make the functional connection between concept and feasability of the build. They also didn't quite get the whole "budget bumper" concept. Some of their designs have become so complex that it would take a LOT of time and money to fab up with no added function other then looking "cool".
Here's my most recent pic as of 10 minutes ago. I got all fab/mock up done except the passenger head light piece. That will hopefully get done tomorrow evening. I added a couple more supports to make it a little more rigid.
FINALLY!!!! I got the last piece on. Now I just need to remove it, weld the back side, grind it, prime it, and paint it. I will probably get the welding all done and cleaned up this weekend. Painting will have to wait until next weekend. Here's how it looks as of today.
