Welp, because of school and life, its been a while since my last update, but the semester is done, and the stress of finals is over with
time to get back to work
*forewarning* this post is pretty long winded and picture heavy
Finally got the metal that I am gonna build the winch plate and base of the bumper out of. Got some of the pieces tacked together and test fitted.
I am slightly concerned with the approach angle due to the roller fairlead sticking out so far, so I pushed the winch up a little further. I also may end up ditching the fairlead all together.
The winch is going to stick pretty far up into the grill, and well beyond the front of it, so I am going to have to figure out a custom grill once the bumper is said and done.
Then I got completely side tracked building a welding cart:
and I realized my passenger side TTB drop bracket had a crack starting, so I pulled that sucker off to fix it. (figured that was a little more important than the bumper)
I purchased the lift kit used, and it seems as though the bracket broke once before and was welded. This time it cracked right along the weld.
Cleaned it all up, and went to bend the bracket into the correct shape, and the weld broke the rest of the way. I had planned on grinding most of the old weld out and rewelding, then grinding the rest out, etc, but I guess grinding it all out before is as good a time as ever.
got it all welded back together and cleaned up, and added a few reinforcement plates
back to work on the truck...
ended up cutting a bunch more of the fiberglass core support thingy to get the winch as high as I could get it. I pushed it so high that the stock hood latch is not going to work anymore though, so I guess hood pins are in the near future...
got some of the plates that are going to go around the bumper horns tacked on
my friend was screwing around with the camera, so I got a few action shots
got the part that will encircle the frame all finished welding up
I tacked all those plates on when it was sitting on the truck, and there was plenty of clearance for it to slide on and off the frame, and kept test fitting after every couple of welds. I stopped testing when I started my cover passes though, and when I did those, it warped it enough that it was an EXTREMELY tight fit onto the frame, so I spent most of today test fitting, grinding, test fitting, grinding etc etc. ended up taking at least a few thousandths off the top and bottom of the frame to get it to slide on.
Somewhere in there, it decided to start raining pretty good, and I am garage-less like so many, so I set up and Easy-up. Made life much better.
That pretty much brings me up to date. Got the holes on the top of the frame drilled, just four more for the bottom and presto, the winch mounting portion of the bumper will be done
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