Martyn said:
Beau
I have had some inquires on who made the rear bumper on the trailer. Can you share the details.
How wide is the bumper, and given your new storage area behind the fenders how much wider could they be to offer protection?
Hi Martyn,
The previous owner had the bumper made custom, and used it with a custom made landing leg to stabilize the rear of the trailer. Slee Offroad had a hand in a lot of the early mods on this trailer, and he may be the guy that did it. Maybe Sarge can chime in on this, or Slee if he's paying attention here.
The bumper is 55" wide along the top edge, and would need to be another 3" longer on each end to protect the shelves fully. I'd say 62" would be perfect.
The bumper is mounted to the frame along each side, basically with tabs that extend towards the front of the trailer, running along the outside of the frame, almost to the rear edge of the fender. The tabs also provided a location for the tail lights, but I had those relocated to the top of the bumper to make more room for the shelf there. The new shelf is bolted through those same holes, into the trailer frame.
I don't really have a good shot of this mounting prior to the new shelves. Here is a "before" shot of the trailer:
If you look closely at the area between the rear edge of the fender and the bumper, you can see a dark green strip. That's the mounting bracket for the bumper.
The bumper was also bolted to the rear edge of the trailer frame, with a bracket attached to the receiver hitch section.
In this picture you can see the original mounting location, as well as the extension and 2 additional reinforcement points added by my guy to beef up the bumper's strength. The black parts are new:
My trailer is very front-heavy with the addition of the fuel and water cans, and I plan to locate my ice chests to the rear of the trailer using a hitch-mounted basket. This gives me some balast on the rear end of the trailer, and reduces my TTB (time-to-beer) quotient to "nearly instantaneous".
I haven't found a hitch basket that fits right though, and is not utter crap.