daily doubler build

[86 slo-vo]

My winch is up in my bumper pretty good, I can hit the release from the side pretty easy withought having to reach up in there and search for it.

Mine stays pretty clean also.

 

[kroussinoffroad]

my lever is very easy to get to as well.

fact of the matter is that with my old setup having the winch exposed meant it was allways covered in mud and the front of my fairlead was 14'' from my grill. substantially reducing my approach angle. now the fairlead is 4'' from the grill.i went from having a 45 deg approach to around 76 deg's

 

[Kage]

Since I just came from tubing hell

Take a few pieces of scrap, bend them at 90°, 45°, 30°, and 15° to use as templates (Make sure you mark a reference point on the tube!!!!). That will make your life alot easier as you play with tube more often.

And yes, manual benders are a good workout!

 

[Bray D]

Kroussin - I'm lookin at having the fairlead about 4" off of my frame as well. Looking at the pic you posted, I think mine will be in a similar location. I may or may not have to trim some of the grill. I'll see when I get everything set in there for good.

I racked my brain for along time today trying to figure out how to bend up the stinger like I wanted. I wanted to bend the ends so they'd slide into the ends of the frame, and have the stinger 25* from vertical. There's no way I was going to obtain that kind of bend accuracy with the skills I currently have. So I nixed that idea.

I decided to just plate the frame, build the winch plate, then see what everything looked like mocked up and make a decision about what to do with the rest of the bumper at that time.

Plating the frame was a pain in the ass as it is. Vertical and overhead stick welding brings. the. suck.

Plated the inner, outer, and front. Then rough cut the winch plate and mocked the winch in.

Looking at that, I came up with an idea of how do finish the rest of the bumper. It should add a lot of strength to the winch plate, eliminate the need for any multiple bend plane bends, and be different from any of the bumper builds I've been looking at.

More progress to come tomorrow. Maybe the heat index will be under 100 tomorrow. I doubt it.

 

[railman]

hey Bray, would you be interested in selling the steel cable???

nice start

and yes verticle and overhead stick welding sucks...but its what I have to do at work.....

speaking of work, lunch is almost over

l8r, John

 

[Bray D]

Workin the Sunday before the 4th? Shitty.

Absolutely I'll sell the cable. I've got the roller fairlead that can go as well if anyone is interested.

 

[railman]

had a derailment out at the mine.....plus I am working tomorrow as well.....

I plan to replace the cable on the winch I have now....which I plan to use on the Diesel/trailer ( with the reciever cradle it is in now ) ....

I plan to get a new winch here soon with synthetic line.....

l8r, John

 

[Bray D]

Started by cutting some tube for the rear support of the mounting plate last night.

Then threw the plate on top, leveled it up, and hard tacked it for mock up.

Bent up some toob

Cut to size (yes, I wasted a lot. Story of my life.)

Tacked in place. While all of this was together, I tacked the mounting plate to the rear support and traced the front support profile on the bottom of the mounting plate.

Pulled the mounting plate and rear support off and burned in the front support. While they were out, I burned the mounting plate to the rear support.

Cut the plate to size

Installed and tacked in place. You can see I ended up cutting the outer tabs off of the mounting plate. I want my stinger to tie into the front support rather than just weld onto the top of the mounting plate. Figured it would look cleaner/less of an 'after thought'.

Also, I drilled the holes and mounted the winch up. This will be its final mounted position.

I added this mid plate to the underside as well for support. Pic taken before I shmeared my boogers all over it.

All welded up

I was going to go ahead and burn the stinger on, but I think I ended up cutting it too short, so now it'll be too narrow when I notch the tube.

That pissed me off. Royally.

I'm sick of trying to create badass stuff with inferior tools. You have to be a fawking millionaire to do things 'right'. Cutting radii into 3/16" steel with a cutoff wheel = not cool. Overhead welding with an old ass stick welder that doesn't even have a working switch = not cool. Manual bender without bendtech = not cool. Notching tube with a cutoff wheel = not cool.

To complete my setup, I need a 220v mig welder, bendtech, air over hydro kit for my bender, a quality notcher, and a torchmate table.

Its sooo frustrating putting in so much time, only to have mediocre results. It seems my expectations are growing faster than my abilities with the tooling I have available.

I guess this is why I've waited so long to build bumpers. I knew it was going to be a project that I would struggle with.

/rant

 

[kris97ranger]

i dunno man looks pretty sick to me. this whole truck has been built pretty damn well.

but i know what you mean about the tools.... ive built my entire truck using a 4 1/2" grinder with cutoff wheels, wire wheels and a grinding wheel. a hammer and hand tools. 1 floor jack and 2 jackstands, thats it.... its a bitch and all of that is being done in a driveway in the rain and/or snow.

 

[Bray D]

I was just all around frustrated yesterday. Welds were pissing me off. 85% of the welding had to be either vertical or overhead. That's partially the reason I like building with bolt on brackets. I can take them off and orient them correctly so I can lay a nice weld. You don't that that luxury when you're welding on stuff. Dealing with all the slag from a stick welder is a bitch.

It took me probably 1.5hrs to bend the front support. Calculate. measure. bend. measure. not enough angle, reinstall tube and bend more. repeat 10x. haha.

What I have going on is extremely inefficient. I don't have enough experience to be proficient at it, and its getting to me. I pick up on things rather quickly, but I think this may take some time. Unfortunately, it costs a lot of money to 'learn' to work with tube as well.

I'd better log off or I'll be ranting all day. haha.

 

[Kyle M.]

Ahh, quit your bitchin and be glad you have the skills and the tools you have to do what you do.


Looks good so far, keep it up!

 

[railman]

Ahh, quit your bitchin and be glad you have the skills and the tools you have to do what you do.


Looks good so far, keep it up!

totally agree with Kyle on this.....

yes you have the brains, but all this takes practice, practice, practice, and even more......PRACTICE....

as was stated before, you have done excellent work with the tools you've got....

now that you are out of school and getting a "real" paycheck......before long you will be able to get all the tools ya want, as well as the "good stuff"......

as the old saying goes....." you have to learn to crawl before ya walk, and walk before ya run...."

again, keep up the progress...eventually you will get the hang of it

btw, send Greg ( 97trailrigdd ) a PM and ask for some pics of his homebuilt JD2 hyrdo setup....I know you could fab up the same thing....

l8r, John

 

[86 slo-vo]

Ahh, quit your bitchin and be glad you have the skills and the tools you have to do what you do.


Looks good so far, keep it up!

agreed, doesnt matter how much tools you have...you will always need something you dont have.

i like it, get it done.

 

[disciplerocks]

I agree with Kyle. But it does look really good man.

 

[kroussinoffroad]

bumpers are time consuming for sure. there are alot of little usefull tricks you will come up with all on your own along the way. i think i had about 8 hours into my initial tube front bumper.

as far as notching goes some can be made fairly easy others become a pita. perpindicular is by far the easieast the farther you get from that the tougher they get.
when notching perpindicular fish mouth's it can be done easily with a cutoff/swazall take your pipe and just cut the end into a point and with just a weebit of grinder work it will fit perfectly

another trick (if you wanna call it that) that i use is when trying to bend two identical bends. I will make my first bend and as long as i'm happy with that one i will lay the pipe on the floor and trace both sides with soap stone. mark your first bend begining middle and end on the floor. place the pipe on the floor where you want you next bend and you can mark the begining middle and end of the next one by rotating the pipe thru the radius thats traced. you can also verify you have the same bend by laying your new bend on the floor in your outline.

last little tool i made was i made a "angle finder" by taking a 2 pieces of flat stock 2'x2''x3/16 aluminum and bolting 1 end together with a nylon washer inbetween and a nylock on one side. makes it easy to get an idea of what degreee you want to bend. it wont have the radius but gets you into the ball park.

I hope some of this kinda makes sense