Update time...
I was actually hoping to update after I got the bumper done, but I thought ive done quite a bit since my last update and I guess progress is worthy now.
So...
I had started fabbing up a winch cradle a couple weeks ago, which I was going to fab a bumper around. Well luckily It rained for about a week straight, so I had some time to think about how I was going about it. I didnt really like how low it sat (pretty much even with the bottom of the frame rails) so I scrapped what I had going and decided to box in the front of the frame and locate the winch plate between the rails. Doing this netted me about 2" of extra clearance, and made it so the winch actually mounted to the frame instead of the bumper. I pulled the valence from under the grill and trimmed the fenders so that i could run the bumper evenly across the whole front from fenderwell to fenderwell, with the winch tucked in behind the bumper. I made fish-plates with nuts welded to them, that I welded on the inside of the frame before I boxed it in.
Here is some pics:
My helper/legal-owner-of-the-vehicle doing some wire brushing-
The winch-plate setup-
Bum-housin' it-
Cad drawings... I plan on adding a Bull-bar with a couple lights, and some recovery points to the front... I think it will break up the "fanny-pack-ness" look of the bumper... and obviously it will be painted black to match...-
I also sealed up the gap in the back fenders. I just bought some great stuff from lowes and used some DAP polyeurathane caulking to seal the foam up... Dead easy way of doing it.-
Tomorrow im going to bring the DXF files into work and burn out the pieces for the bumper on the plasma table, much easier than doing it by hand.
Updates soon...