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My ARB is definitely not 3/16". I would guess it's 1/8" or possibly even thinner. Any idea on the what weight is on your bumper? My goal is to be under 100lbs. without the winch. The center piece is roughly 45lbs. That gives me 55lbs worth of tubing and welding wire. I should easily be under the 100lb mark. My guess is that I will be in the 80-90lb. range.
That is way lighter than I was expecting.
I went ahead and bent the tubing forward to an angle I liked. I definitely like this look more. I think this is the design I will be going with. I was supposed to pick up the DOM tubing last week but got buried in orders. Hopefully it will slow down a bit so I can head over to the metal supply yard and pick up the tubing. In the pics I pushed the bumper all the way on to the frame to show how it will actually sit. The bolt holes are lined up now. In the pic the upper tubing makes contact with the headlight and hood but on the actual 80 there is an 1" of clearance at the most narrow spot. Should fit perfect.
I will definitely not be getting into the business of fabricating bumpers. My skills as a Mechanical Engineering teacher are in design, strength, and function; not fabrication. A pro could knock out the tube bends and welding in a couple hours. I will take multiple weekends to get it all done. If I sold these I would probably make less then a buck an hour. Bumper fab is just a fun hobby I like to do when I have down time. It's also something I can teach my boys and a project we can do together. They will be right next to me during the build of this bumper. Already picked them up their own gloves, welding masks, and a few other things so they each feel like they have their own tools to contribute to the project.
Realistically a couple strips of 1/4" x .5" or 1" flat bar running front to back near the winch mounting bolts will keep the plate from flexing under heavy load and it won't add much weight.Go back and look at my design. I did add extra plates under the winch plate. My stress analyzer was showing some issues with the plate. The little triangle trusses took care of that. I hope Trail Gear sees this thread and will start adding the little triangulated pieces under their plate like I did. It is needed for a hard pull on a 12k winch.I also like the angled design and it will help keep a deer off the hood or windshield. I built mine without any bull bar, but it would take a tall deer to make it into the grill with 35's and 4-5" of lift.
Definitely don't want to put the winch above the frame rails and block the radiator. These rigs have cooling issues already. Mounting it between the frame rails shouldn't affect the approach angle much if at all if done correctly.
I did a lot of reading before I built my front bumper and I would recommend adding a little steel to the bottom side of the winch plate for strength. If you are putting a 9K lbs winch on that bumper the 1/4" winch plate could be too light and could warp under a heavy pull and damage the plate and your winch. If I recall correctly Warn recommends 3/8" plate as a minimum for most of their bigger winches, but I could be wrong- just going off memory from a couple years ago. I built my winch mount plate out of 1/2" AR plate to be sure.
I agree with you- build it to our tastes not the tastes of others. After all, it is going on your rig.
Here's the pic showing the pieces I added under the winch.
I never ran any testing on 2" tubing. Since it's the same wall thickness I would assume the added diameter would not add much strength but probably some due to the increase in material to go around a 2" diameter. I just don't like huge tubing. I also don't have a 2" mold on my tube bender. I have a 1.5" and a 1.75" mold. I prefer 1.75" tubing but the cost almost doubles when I go from 1.5" to 1.75" so I will probably stick with 1.5" tubing to get the price in check. The CAD design I made is using 1.5" tubing and I personally think it looks fine.
