Chevy Blazer Bumper Customization

[shedfullatools]

Buddy of mine bought a couple of 7 inch leds to mount somewhere on his 05 Blazer. While we were trying to find a good place to put em that looked good and worked good I suggested half jokingly to sink them into the bumper. He liked the idea so I fabbed up a couple of boxes and we got to work, also removed the plastic lower valance and made a custom steel skidplate in its place. Don't pay too much attention to the welds please, they are not my finest work but it really was quite windy

 

[shedfullatools]

Rest of the pictures, don't mind the screws either they are a little caddywompus
Edit: Pictures wont stay rotated properly nothing more I can do about it

 

[nonhog]

Looks plenty stout!

 

[Benw455]

Its different how is the light output?

 

[shedfullatools]

Looks plenty stout!

Seems to be plenty sturdy

Its different how is the light output?

It is an interesting look, little blocky looking but he likes it and I think it looks fine. I have the same lights on mine and the light output is amazing, both ditches and up into the treeline lit up like day has saved me from hitting a couple moose now. His are about the same but cast a little less light upwards due to the top of the box, that's more of a good thing than bad. Camera focuses well on light and doesn't really do them justice but that is them turned on.

 

[Bacon!]

The backs of those LED enclosures are meant to be in open air to cool them. If you had a separate LED board mounted on a copper plate and that plate perimeter (not just spot) welded to the bumper that could work to heatsink better, but as is it looks like you're mainly making a little oven to cause premature failure. Maybe it's a higher end light and has a thermal sensor to scale back output, that'll help a lot but at the cost of light output.

The extra heat will also tend to warp the acrylic lens which is also not very crack/chip resistant which (in addition to beam angle) is why most are mounted higher up to reduce road debris assaults.

Functionally they seem to have no good purpose. For offroading you'd want them up on the roof. For on-road they're illegal in the glaring wide angle and wouldn't make good fog lights due to the bluish color temperature. You'd see a lot of fog more than see through it.

Sorry my post seems negative, the integration is good but I didn't want to be politically correct and not mention the negatives.

 

[ilovevocs]

^^ Yet not a single f$&k was given.

 

[Bacon!]

^ Meaning what? Do something and don't care about the result?

 

[shedfullatools]

The backs of those LED enclosures are meant to be in open air to cool them. If you had a separate LED board mounted on a copper plate and that plate perimeter (not just spot) welded to the bumper that could work to heatsink better, but as is it looks like you're mainly making a little oven to cause premature failure. Maybe it's a higher end light and has a thermal sensor to scale back output, that'll help a lot but at the cost of light output.

The extra heat will also tend to warp the acrylic lens which is also not very crack/chip resistant which (in addition to beam angle) is why most are mounted higher up to reduce road debris assaults.

Functionally they seem to have no good purpose. For offroading you'd want them up on the roof. For on-road they're illegal in the glaring wide angle and wouldn't make good fog lights due to the bluish color temperature. You'd see a lot of fog more than see through it.

Sorry my post seems negative, the integration is good but I didn't want to be politically correct and not mention the negatives.

I have no problem with constructive criticism at all, its usually more helpful than not However I do want to say: Air circulation should be plenty while driving down the road, cheap *** lights if they burn out in a year big deal throw some new ones in. They are not designed to be fog lights, clearly too much light for that, they are simply for some extra light. Who gives a **** if they are illegal I always just turn em off when I see head lights coming, we played with mounting them in about a dozen places but two little lights up on the roof looks goofy as hell and on the bumper like on my truck they stood out like a sore thumb. I wouldn't have even thought of doing it this way but look at all the custom truck bumpers that mount the 4" ones identical to this, fairly popular way to do it it seems. Edit: they are a flood pattern light, they seemingly have no beam angle and no matter where you mount them they light everything up, downside they don't shine any distance but they give a lot of light directly around you.

 

[Bacon!]

Who gives a **** if they are illegal I always just turn em off when I see head lights coming, ... they are a flood pattern light, they seemingly have no beam angle and no matter where you mount them they light everything up, downside they don't shine any distance but they give a lot of light directly around you.

Great, a lot of people would say they turn them off when someone else is coming but don't.

That's the problem with (and good thing about) light mods. Police don't notice them until that guy who runs them 100% of the time and blinds others. Owners need to know they're illegal so they both don't get ticketed and don't blind others. Some people don't even wire to turn them on and off independent of their headlights... because a switch and 5' of wire costs $5, lol.

 

[KMinAF]

I really like the idea, just wondering if the box could have been "countersunk" into the bumper to retain the bumpers contour? Perhaps clearance was an issue?

 

[shedfullatools]

I really like the idea, just wondering if the box could have been "countersunk" into the bumper to retain the bumpers contour? Perhaps clearance was an issue?

That's the first orientation we put it in and I tacked it in, it looked good but the only problem was the lights mount to the back of the box in order to be centered. With the box at such an angle and the light mounted to the back the lights would have shone to far from the side to be useful, if you made your box taller and mounted the light to the bottom so that it could be turned you could definitely sink them flush. Only problem with a taller box and this bumper is that you would be getting mighty close to running out of bumper to cut out Edit: this may have been what you meant but if you put the box in like I have it you could make them a lot deeper and still mount the light flat against the back and cut the front to the curve of the bumper so it doesn't hang out. I think the vehicle has enough clearance in back to do it that way.

 

[snyder]

I always thought bacon was good on everything.