The Lone Ranger – Kage’s ’94 X-Cab Leaf SAS and Bed Bob

[railman]

looks good man, mines is about the same 2k at 70

agree with him...looks really good

wish mine was 2k at 70.....mine is more like 3k +.......

l8r, John

 

[bull90]

nice rig diggin your style very much

 

[Kage]

Front Bumper Guessing

I started playing with some ideas for my front bumper tonight. I was having difficulty trying to figure out how to make the front bumper not seem retardedly huge. With the help of the wife, I think I’ve got a decent concept to work on.

The issue is that I’m trying to meet IL lift law, which states 27” in the front for my GVWR. The lower part of my winch plate currently meets that:

That’s cool, but as you can see, I’ve got a huge gap to fill. So I grabbed some scrap steel and cardboard and got at it. The first attempt started to confirm my fears that I was going to wind up with a giant bumper when I just came off the lower plate and went up:

It got even worse when I added the cardboard filler parts:

At this point, it was time to regroup and come up with something more ‘minimalist’ if you will. Instead of starting the angle up from the bottom of the winch plate, I moved it up a bit. The added benefit of doing that is a easy/good location to mount my front hooks:

One deviation on that theme is adding another small gusset (lower LH piece of tape) to make the lines flow a little better:

The wife is leaning more toward not having the gusset, I’m on the fence. We’ll see what happens in the end.

The front bumper is going to be tucked up fairly well under the front fascia with only the extreme ends (by the turn signals) sticking out enough to use as exo mounting points. I think I’ll go ahead and add a small stinger when I get to it as they seem to be handy enough to have (though I hate the looks of them). The outside edges of the bumper will wrap around the side of the truck just a bit as well.

I’ve got an idea on a ‘removable’ center section where the fairlead will mount to. My hope is to have a section that I can pop out to remove the winch if needed without having to pull the whole front of the nose off the truck. We’ll see if I can make the idea in my head work out in real life.

As a whole, I’m going to stew on the idea for a bit (need to kill time while the paint dries anyway) before I commit to anything.

 

[86 slo-vo]

i like the left side, do some kind of fancy gusset or some tube and it would look better, the right side just looks too "big"

but thats just my opinion

 

[4.0B2]

do a plate like that bottom cardboard but punch round holes out of it, almost prerunner style! lol... i like the left side of your bumper.

 

[99RangerOffRoad]

What if you combined both those ideas. Make an angle that goes towards the center of the headlight and then go flat out along the grill.

 

[4.0B2]

post 348. Endoverend's build? something like that?
http://www.therangerstation.com/forums/showthread.php?t=397&page=24

its not huge.. i like it.

 

[Kage]

i like the left side, do some kind of fancy gusset or some tube and it would look better, the right side just looks too "big"

but thats just my opinion

I agree.

do a plate like that bottom cardboard but punch round holes out of it, almost prerunner style! lol... i like the left side of your bumper.

Got some dimple dies I can borrow?

What if you combined both those ideas. Make an angle that goes towards the center of the headlight and then go flat out along the grill.

That's a thought, but I still need the edge of the bumper to be pretty stout as that will be a load bearing point for my cage.

post 348. Endoverend's build? something like that?
http://www.therangerstation.com/forums/showthread.php?t=397&page=24

its not huge.. i like it.

I'd been looking at that one, but to get it down to leagal height, It still winds up giving me a huge bumper. In my younger years, I wouldn't have cared about the potential legal issues, but I'm getting more wary as I get older .

After sleeping on it, I'm going to do something more along the lines of the Left side. This should give me "less" bumper, make it easier toget a tire up on something, and give me an easy mouting point for my front tow hooks.

Thanks for the input guys!

 

[Kage]

Respray #2 today. The color looks to be considerably closer to what its suppost to be now..

 

[gearhead51]

looking good, cant wait to see some wheeling pics
how do i get ahold of duffy to get a doubler kit and how much was the kit

 

[4.0B2]

tow hooks do like i did. 1" steel welded on the mounting point to the frame. welded to the braces where it bolts to the frame... and weld it on the outside. i bet my tow points are good.

 

[Kage]

looking good, cant wait to see some wheeling pics

You and me both! The first break in run is coming up quick (First weekend of June) so look for some photo's then!

...how do i get ahold of duffy to get a doubler kit and how much was the kit

Best bet is to call him (Leave a message if he doesn't answer):
Duffy
D.D.Machine
(360)649-4465

He's also on Ebay as 4x4machineshop

I didn't have any trouble getting ahold of him when I called, and he was pleasant to deal with. As for the cost, I don't recall (I bought it last October). I want to say it was around $450 shipped. Might have been more... or less.. guess the memory isn't as good as it use to be The biggest selling point of the kit (IMHO, and worth every penny of the cost) is the one piece shaft, everything else you can probably hammer out yourself if you wanted to take the time to do it.

tow hooks do like i did. 1" steel welded on the mounting point to the frame. welded to the braces where it bolts to the frame... and weld it on the outside. i bet my tow points are good.

The look a little small to me Thanks for the idea! Right now I'm going to wait a few days for the paint on the bed to be fully cured before I thrown grinding dust all over it. Look for some bumper updates mid week.

 

[gearhead51]

Best bet is to call him (Leave a message if he doesn't answer):
Duffy
D.D.Machine
(360)649-4465

He's also on Ebay as 4x4machineshop

I didn't have any trouble getting ahold of him when I called, and he was pleasant to deal with. As for the cost, I don't recall (I bought it last October). I want to say it was around $450 shipped. Might have been more... or less.. guess the memory isn't as good as it use to be The biggest selling point of the kit (IMHO, and worth every penny of the cost) is the one piece shaft, everything else you can probably hammer out yourself if you wanted to take the time to do it.

thanks hopefully i can get ahold of him and get my doubler underway

 

[Kage]

Front bumper Main Structure

It was a bit of a road to get here, but I finally settled on a design for the front. Just to recap, I went through more than a few versions to figure out exactly what I wanted.

Starting with V1 (Right) and V2 (Left):

I then ditched those two ideas and started on the V3 with the main supports:

Added the outer potions:

Still wasn’t happy with that (seemed to big). So onto V4, I kept the same center supports (3.5x3.5x1/4 wall) and Added some 2x3x1/4 wall and some 1.25x.120 wall DOM:

Bingo! I’m pretty happy with that, so everything came back off for a final weld off the truck:

Burned it back on:

And added my Tow hooks and a few small gussets:

The thing got tucked under the front real nice like:

Slapped some primer on it, once I finish the stinger, I’ll throw some bedliner on it:

I still need to get my winch mounting plate started, stinger, and finish making the bumper ‘pretty’ (rounding the corners under the turn signals). This will work for now and keep me legal. I’ll add a separate section when I get the stinger done.

 

[Kage]

In other news, the bed is back on the truck. The color doesn’t quite match, and there’s a bit of orange peel (used a different hardener and that screwed us) but It works just fine for what I’m going to use it for.

When you look at it right, the color matches great!

In other angles, it looks a bit more Red:

Whatever, it’ll do..

Now that the front bumper is ‘done enough for the law’ I’m going to start getting the rear bumper somewhat done. The first scheduled trip out (June 3-5) is coming up pretty damn quick. I think I’m going to abandon the cage work for now, and concentrate on getting the sliders/bumpers/skids done so that those are ready to go for the first trip. Not having the cage will just force me to be nicer to it the first time out. Which is probably a good thing since it is suppose to be a shake down run after all.