You've got a lot going on, those yotas are really nice
Thanks. I love these old trucks.
As promised, here's a walk through of the bumper build.
My buddy drove up from San Diego (2.5ish hour drive) and got to my place at 8am Saturday morning. Chatted for a bit and showed him some recent projects, then got to work by 830am. He had already pulled the bumper off so just had to cut the stock bumper mounting brackets off, and then cut again to cut the frame horns back. I cut out a couple of plates out of 1/8", rounded the corners on the 12" disc sander and burned them on.
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From there we set up a straight 10ft piece of 1.75"x .120 wall seamed mild tube (no need for DOM on bumpers, in my opinion) and figured out the distance we wanted it to be from the grill, along with height. That's why you'll see a stool, wooden blocks, and roller stands in the pictures. Once that is determined (and the measurement written down for reference), we started figuring out where the bends go and how much to bend. I use 2 pieces of 1"x 1/8" strap that pivot on a bolt, about 2 feet long total, to mock up my bends. I then lock in the angle by tightening the nut, then use a Husky digital protractor (
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01CQ5DUA8/?tag=atomicindus08-20) to figure out what angle the bend needs to be. Once I get that, I use a digital angle gauge (
https://www.harborfreight.com/digital-angle-gauge-63615.html) while bending the tube to get my desired bend angle. Since my tube bender draws the tube up (like the rogue fab bender) rather than horizontally (like the JD^2) I am able to put my tube through, place the gauge on the tube (it's magnetic), I can zero it out, then just read the gauge as the bend is being made.
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You can see the setup in the picture above. My bender is an Affordable Bender that I modified to fit a HF 20ton air/hydraulic jack. The conversion was done hastily and is very ugly, so no pictures of that
I really like this setup because it makes it easy to keep my bends in the same plane.
Here you can see the first two bends completed and put back on the stands. We started figuring out where the next bends were going to be. (I always work from the middle to the outside when bending. Also, make sure you mark the middle of your tube and work from that measurement. Helps keep everything symmetrical).
https://scontent-lax3-1.**.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/48393695_10156510707821501_3153834497368129536_n.jpg?_nc_cat=110&_nc_ht=scontent-lax3-1.**&oh=53a8f9a46c96ff22a7bf9109543dc185&oe=5C953509
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Once that's done I make the tubes coming off the frame horns. Having these gives me a consistent spot to bring the main tube back to after bending. I didn't get a picture at this point, but we continued on with the next set of bends. You can see all bends done and frame horn tubes done here.
https://scontent-lax3-1.**.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/48364038_10156510708191501_8276122501575081984_n.jpg?_nc_cat=108&_nc_ht=scontent-lax3-1.**&oh=0a5dd986e1fa148878936944a4f5c52a&oe=5CAF54C8
I keep the main tube ends long until the very end.
Once all the bends are done and you're sure everything is square and even, burn in the frame horn tubes and tack (or fully weld, doesn't matter too much) the main tube to the horns. (I use a leather welding apron to cover paint/plastic when welding close by. It's not in this picture because I was welding below it and not worried about sparks)
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From this point on you're basically connecting the dots with your tubes. I did the skid plate tubes first. There is a radiator hanging pretty low on these, so I had to put a bend in it. I notched the tube first so it can sit on the main tube properly, then marked where to bend it, and it took a few tries getting the bend right. I snuck up on it so I wouldn't go too far and have to trash the tube. After I got the bend where it needed to be, I cut and grinded the tube on the lower control arm crossmember side. Unfortunately, that crossmember isn't flat up and down, so it took 30 or 40 trips back and forth to the grinder to get it to fit perfect
. The second one took half the time
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I know there's a gap on the bend of the skiplate, I'll get to that in a bit
So after the skid plate tubes, I just needed the kicker tubes off the side of the frame. Those went easy enough. You can see in the above below I threw my tag on the passenger side
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Alright, close to the finish line. I needed to mount the skid plate, so I used a straight edge across the tubes to hold tabs flush. Everything was going pretty smooth. Got the top tabs and middle tabs done, then drilled holes in the skid and bolted them up to allow us to bend the aluminum around the tubes, then mark and drill for the bottom tabs. Well, I welded the middle tabs too close to the bend, so it created a gap between the tube. On my old blazer, I think I had the tabs higher up from the bend, so I didn't have any gap. We tried using my press brake to bend the plate closer to the tube, hence the creases. It worked decent, but I'm not thrilled about it. Ended up putting another set of tabs just below the bend and used bolts to **** it up. Worked pretty good, but again, not how I wanted it to go. The owner is still stoked so that's all that matters.
Oh! I used a skillsaw with a regular wooden blade to cut the skid. It's 0.90 6061-T6 aluminum. I've cut .125 with this method no problems. Just use a straight edge clamped on as a guide (make cardboard template first!).
After all this it was time to glue it together and weld on the light bar tabs. My buddy was pretty picky about the placement of the bar so I had to get creative with the tabs lol. If they were horizontal the bar would sit way too high. The angled tabs let us keep the bar forward a bit more and keep it pretty low. I'll just post all the weld pictures right now, too lol.
https://scontent-lax3-1.**.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/48369565_10156509742956501_1745215099796193280_n.jpg?_nc_cat=103&_nc_ht=scontent-lax3-1.**&oh=8c333813090e365ef47a38cf48977158&oe=5C9CA138
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I stepped a bit too far in between pulls on some of the welds. That's something I want to work on in the future. Tighten up the beads a bit.
But here's the finished product after we chopped the ends and welded on caps.
https://scontent-lax3-1.**.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/48412013_10156510746356501_5862271840939933696_n.jpg?_nc_cat=102&_nc_ht=scontent-lax3-1.**&oh=363d56b2deb09597d8d1e6122b47f542&oe=5C91583D
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This Explorer has all new suspension/steering components up front, 3 or 4" lift spindles, 32x11.5 all terrains, and 10" long lift shackles I built. My buddy is slowly fixing it up just to bring his dirtbike to and from the desert and to sleep in. He doesn't take it on trails so no need for 4x4.
