Atrais's Build Thread

[Atrais]

(Fixed the pictures)

So after driving around with my raised front bumper for a while I finally got tired of the front and back not matching and went ahead and started on a front bumper. Step 1: Lopped the front of the frame rails off, capped them with 3/8" steel and then ran a .120" wall square tube cross member between them for the bumper (and eventually winch) mount. The crossmember has three through holes per side with .120" wall DOM tube on the inside (to prevent the square tube from squishing) for the six 3/4" through bolts that will mount the bumper.

The plates that the bumper will be built off of are 1/2" thick.

 

[Atrais]

Just a picture showing the crossmember primed and painted, waiting on the bumper.

 

[Atrais]

So now the actual bumper starts. All the main tubes are .120" wall 1.75" DOM tube. I bent the lower bar first and ran it between the two mounting pads. This forms the "bottom" of the bumper and the base from which I'll build the rest off of. Next I measured and best up the large horizontal bar that will be the "top" of the bumper. I held this piece up with jackstands to get it level and at the height I wanted and then cut and notched the two vertical separators to hold the two tubes apart. Some more leveling and making sure everything was square, and then I tacked everything in place.

 

[Atrais]

Next I bent up a small "stinger" bar. I wanted it to be just above the hood line so that when I ran reinforcements those bars wouldn't be in the path of the headlights. Pretty simple, just have to know what your bend radius is on something like this wo your bar isn't too wide or too narrow!

I forgot to take a picture of them separately, but you can see the bottom portion of the bumper sides have been tacked in place here. These were by far the hardest part of this thing as they were compound bends, mounted at an angle, with a really shallow notch to join them at the bottom of the bumper. At first I was going to use a much simpler shape, but I didn't like how it looked or how they were attaching to the lower piece so I went with these and made my life a living hell.

 

[Atrais]

So next up was making the headlight runners. These are meant to protect the headlights from big ******** smacking them as well as to reinforce the stinger bar. Not too bad on these, just a basic 90 bend with a shallow compound notch where they join to the stinger. (If you look really close the driver's side one wasn't quite done being notched, LOOK AT THAT GAP!)

 

[Atrais]

So I decided I wanted some front recovery points, so I made some quick and dirty shackle mounts out of some 1" bar. Then I sunk them into 2 more vertical supports I made for the bottom of the stinger bar by cutting holes through them, putting the shackle mounts through and welding on both sides of the tube. I also ran a support tube on the backside to triangulate this structure and added a top and side mount to my original bumper mount plate to give me more surface area. Then I butt welded the end of the shackle mount to that tube as well. Looking back I wish I had cut the vertical tubes for the shackle mounts BEFORE I welded the tubes in place but hey, what's life without a little adventure?

 

[Atrais]

So I had some square LED lights left over from another project (2 flood, 2 spot) and thought I'd incorporate them into this thing. I got 2 .125" plates waterjet to fit between my 2 vertical bars on each side so I could recess them. I also ran some supports out to the corners of the bumper to help with side loading.

 

[Atrais]

Sooooo when I had the light plates waterjet I also had them waterjet me a front .1875" plate with the "Pajero" emblem and a spot for a winch fairlead lol. Got this leveled up and tacked in place. After I did this the bumper looked a little goofy so I went ahead and filled in the sides of the bumper with some dimple dyed 10ga steel.

 

[Atrais]

So I don't have any pics of the last step, but basically I made a top plate out of some more 10 ga steel to give the bumper a more "finished" look. I reinforced it with some 1" square tube on the bottom (so it wouldn't deflect or bend if I wanted to stand on it or something) and snagged an aluminum winch fairlead for the front (going to have to be a poser until I can get a winch in there!). When I go to install the winch I'll probably cut a hole in this top plate so I can get to the controls and whatnot but for right now I'm happy with it. The fog lights are wired in to a relay that triggers off the running lights and the spots are wired into the factory fog light circuit. I also added some small LED marker lights to the corners of the bumper that are wired into the running lights as well. Overall I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. I still need to make a proper skid plate (I've modified the OEM one to work for now) and I'll probably do it out of some thick-ish aluminum plate BUT I only had 2 weeks to relocate to another job so I had to finish this sucker kind of quick.

 

[Atrais]

Next up is sliders and maybe some different shocks. I'm running KYB's right now but have been eyeing some King's and with the extra weight front and rear they're getting tempting....

 

[Atrais]

aaaaand fixed the pics lol.

 

[SONICMASD]

Great looking bumper! Where'd your roof basket go?

 

[bikerjosh]

aaaaand fixed the pics lol.

Looks great, where do I send the check for mine? :sombrero:
Nice job

 

[Atrais]

Great looking bumper! Where'd your roof basket go?

It's chilling in my garage. The original crossbars were looking a little tired so I ordered some square tube to replace them and make some stronger mounting points for the drip rail brackets. The metal didn't get here in time for me to knock it out before my move and I figured it'd be best to leave it off for the time being for gas mileage (it was a little over 17 hours). I plan to put it back on as soon as I finish it up along with another project.

 

[Atrais]

Looks great, where do I send the check for mine? :sombrero:
Nice job

Thanks, it was definitely a lot of work. More than once I asked myself why I chose cars as a hobby, I could've collected sramps or rocks haha.