HardRooster

Ok, so it's going to be more than $27 once you count all the grinding wheels, mig wire, shielding gas and beer. But I only spent $27 on the raw materials. All that 3/16" plate you see in this write up...$27. So even if it looks like it'll still be sooooo worth it. If nothing else for the fun project.

So let's get started. No pics of it, but I mocked this whole bumper up with cardboard so I'd know exactly what I needed, and getting the steel pre cut to just the right dimensions saved me a ton of time. And I was only off on one measurement by 1/4" so not bad for my first major metal fab project. It won't affect the final product.

My first job today was to cut out the 8 mount holes and the two 4" fog light holes into the face plate of the bumper. I spent most of my time today just working on the face plate. I carefully measured out my drill points and pre drill the pilot holes with the 1/4" bit supplied with the arbor for my hole saws. Once those were done I removed the bit from the arbor and replaced it with a piece of 1/4" steel rod.

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Why? Well, hole saws tend to walk, and as it walks it pulls the drill bit against the pilot hole, enlarging the pilot hole allowing the hole saw to walk even more and you end up with this annoying cycle of just making metal chips and no holes. Pre drilling the pilot holes and using a steel rod eliminates this problem.

Unfortunately there is nothing I can do (for free) to make my 12 speed drill press run any slower than 340 RPM. that's fine for the 3/4" holes. Didn't take but maybe 2-3 minutes per hole, taking plenty of breaks to vacuum out the metal chips. But the 4" holes took for-freaking-ever. And the noise! Gawd awful nails on a chalk board at 1000 decibels for what seemed like hours. Used my Husqvarna chainsaw ear protection which allowed me to piss off my neighbors in relative comfort. I eventually put my public school education to work and used a bungee as an auto-feed mechanism, giving me time to work on other things.

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While my $10 high precision steel milling machine did it's work, I moved on to the factory tow hooks. They're ugly and they're going to be exposed and used with this bumper because I actually like them better than D rings. And they're free. So I put my $39 grinder to work and buzzed down all the casting marks. The few remaining flaws I'll fill with some body filler next week when I paint this whole project.

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More to come shortly

Kendog

Been cutting up cardboard myself for weeks... I can't decide I a style that I want to build. Cool project! Subscribed!!!

HardRooster

So anyway, it's not even noon, I've lost track of my beer consumption and I still have to build my fog light recesses. At some point during the fitting, I realized I should have used a 4 1/8" hole saw because the fog lights didn't fit once I rolled my sheet metal buckets, so I had to grind the holes out a good bit. Oh well

Lucky for me, used sheet metal is free. I just cut some dudes Chevy truck bed in half and took it home.

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2" makes for a good fog light depth and some left over 2" painters tape makes measuring and cutting the metal a simple task. Well, tape and my Harbor Freight cut off tool. The 3M Green Corps wheel cost more than the tool did. Once I had my strips of metal, bending it was easily done by hand. It's fairly thick, about 12ga, but soft.

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Got it bent, cut off the excess which I later used for tabs, and tack welded into place, ready for a fog light test fit.

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All good, now weld it up and grind it down

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And the fit test

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Even more to come, shortly

HardRooster

The tabs for the fog lights were a time consuming little PITA. I'm glad I picked up the Harbor Freight magnets to help me out. Not a complicated task, just marking, tacking, welding, grinding, fitting, drilling, leveling... It's the most tedious, and thus least fun part of this build.

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But with that, the face bar is done, and the time was about 1:00PM. I started at 7:00AM so I'm glad I'm finally seeing something that resembles a bumper. Now I get to do the fun part, and weld on all the plates. Starting with the top plate.

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Tacked up and getting it as square as I can. The plate isn't perfectly straight so it took some wrastlin to get it square(ish)

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I stitch welded the whole thing, trying not to warp it and man do my welds look ugly. With the top plate squared up, the side plates can now go on.

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Not sure if it's visible in the pics, but I chamfered the inside edges of all the plate so I could get some metal to metal overlap, because I'm doing rounded outside edges, both sides are getting welded. The inside welds will provide most of the strength. The outside welds will also be structural. With this set up, I don't have to grind much.

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And that's about it for the day. Ran out of beer and mig wire, so I'll pick this up again tomorrow. I fully expect to have it ready for paint by the end of the day tomorrow, but here you get the final shape. I designed it to cover and protect the rather flimsy cross member below the radiator so as a result it's pretty damn heavy. But I'm really happy with the look so far.

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familytime

Very nice,well done

HardRooster

Got started around 8:00AM and finished just after 11:00AM. Just had to wrap up welding the outside corners and grinding the welds down. Looks pretty good and feels solid. Ready for minor body work and primer, which I will get to during the week when I have time. My goal is to get this thing painted and installed by Friday so I can start planning my next project, tube fenders

My welds got better looking today. Maybe the Lincoln welding wire (made in Mexico) is better than the Chinese stuff I ran out of yesterday. Or maybe I just got better. I still had some pin holes to go back over once I was done grinding, but not too bad for a rookie. I got a lot of practice, went through almost 4lbs of mig wire.

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I gained a lot of experience with this build that I think will help me with future projects. If I were to do this again, I think I would have invested more time and found a place that could have laser cut my holes and bent the bumper out of one piece of plate to minimize the welding. Would have gone much faster, and would be a better product.

But in any case, my Jeep is one step closer to getting fixed and back on the trail, which is the whole point...and for $27...how could I have missed?

sahara4me

Good job so far...something to make it a bit easier next time is 4" exhaust pipe works perfect for the fog lights, you can then weld 8, 3 inch long bolts on the back side of the bumper to secure the foglight brackets. I did this for mine and a few others I've built for friends and its worked great.

HardRooster

Yeah I was looking for some 4" ID tube at the steel place but they didn't have any. Would have been a ton easier, no doubt.

I don't quite understand your 3" bolts idea. Do you have pics of that?

HardRooster

Update today. Did some clean up and preliminary prep work.

First thing I did is mix up some Evercoat Rage Extreme and fill in whatever minor pin holes, dings and whatnot remained from the build. Also filled in the factory stamping marks on the tow hooks.

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Let that set up for about 20 Minutes, then attacked it with some 80 grit on the DA sander. Then a little acetone bath and it's ready for coatings.

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Once in the booth it gets coated with PPG's 2k etch primer, inside and out.

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I'm in the booth with a truck bed, bumper, fender and fender flare, so I used some of the PPG ECS27 Sealer for that job on the inside of the bumper. I won't need to do anything else under here, it's done. Pictured as well is my trusty old Sata KLC primer gun with a 1.7 fluid tip.

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Flip the bumper over and it's 4 really heavy coats of PPG ECP15 surfacer, mixed with minimal reducer to use as a sprayable body filler. Ill let that cure for about 24 hours then block it out.

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The pics don't show it, but there are plenty of grinder marks to fill. This hopefully did the trick.

Next is blocking and rechecking for fairness. May need more filling but it's mostly ready for paint. I'm hoping to have some time for it on Thursday. I have a lot of actual work they insist on paying me to do first, so...priorities!

Till next time

miggs70

Great job, it's looking great.