DIY winch mount bumper custom fabricated

[murphtron]

Epic.

Driver's side is done. I scrapped the old parts which had been mirror image copies of the pieces I cut for the passenger's side... without knowing that the frame holes are in a different position.

I modified my template, tracing the new hole position.

Here's the template. The old hole location is visible as a circular indentation in the masking tape. The new hole is traced with pencil. They don't even overlap. *facepalm*

I roughed out the new pieces last night after dinner.

Today, I got home and finished shaping them out. I just finalized the welds and they're cooling before I grind flat on the outer surfaces and then spray paint.

I'll re-assemble tomorrow afternoon.

Scrapping parts added 1 day.

Nice. How do you complete the long oval hole after drilling it out? Cut it then grind? Only grind it?

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[BellyDoc]

Nice. How do you complete the long oval hole after drilling it out? Cut it then grind? Only grind it?

That's done by hand with the die grinder. First I hogged out the crossing material between the drilled holes and then I smoothed the high spots to straight lines to make the slot. Then I did the bevel. That's all with a ball nosed cone bur.

I have two die grinders. Mostly I use a Makita electric, but I also have an air powered Sears Craftsman one. There are advantages and disadvantages to both.

I have a love/hate relationship with the die grinders. They don't remove metal as fast as an 80 grit flap wheel grinding disk, which is what I use for most metal shaping. So, patience is required. Interestingly, though, I don't think they move metal much faster if I apply pressure compared to light touch. I might as well be patient then, because I can spend my energy on being precise rather than strong.

Both can bite and jump unpredictably.

The chips they throw are super sharp and they get everywhere. Getting little metal slivers in my arms and hands is normal, and gloves don't change a thing because the chips are on everything when I'm done. I've also learned to be super careful about opening my eyes after shampooing these out of my hair. Lots of rinsing first. If I have a coffee going while I'm grinding, I flip a plastic bucket upside down over the top of it. The cell phone stays in the house.

 

[joes bronco]

Nice job and a nice welder used those millers for a lot of yrs. before retiring. To the wench mount. any guess as to the weight?

 

[BellyDoc]

Nice job and a nice welder used those millers for a lot of yrs. before retiring. To the wench mount. any guess as to the weight?

Totally pulling this one out through a sphincter, but my *guess* is it wasn't much more than the stock modular it replaced. If the modular is around 75, this was maybe as much as 80? I think I mostly concentrated the metal to the center, going with 3/16" plate for the actual winch platform, and 1/4" angle where it bolts to the frame. Everything else is 1/8" in the rectangle and round tubes. I could lift it around comfortably.

I have a long history of overbuilding and I really TRIED to break with that. In fact I aborted my first version because I was just building the mounting points and it was already totally out of weight control.

Here are some aborted parts that actually got welded together just to bolt to the frame horns, they include 1/4", 3/16" and 1/8" stock as well as a weld-on tow point that's 7/8" thick

All that was subsequently replaced by this:

Here's a really nice looking weld that's now in a scrap bucket:

It hurts me when I have to admit that my idea sucks and it's time to start over, but I get over it once I'm well on my way down the better line. This was the pathway to an unnecessarily massive bumper.

When I initially took off the modular, I measured the height off the ground to the front corner of the fender flare before and after. The difference was 3/8". That's how much the stock springs lifted the nose when the bumper came off. When I started fitting up my build without the winch on, it went back down 3/8".

After it was all buttoned up, I had a local shop install an Icon Stage 5 kit, lifting about 2" and leveling it.

Then I did skid plates.

 

[BellyDoc]

So ... I'm done.

I got home, the spray paint was dry, and so I installed the reinforcements. They fit up perfectly. All the bolt stabs went right in, no abuse required. Bolted up, the bumper sits level to within 1/16" which is as accurate as I can measure.

The only part left I wanted to show was how I got the frame rails reinforced against crush when I through-bolted.

I had previously massaged the outer hole up to half inch with a step drill on each side, otherwise a 12 mm bolt would only go through the inboard hole.

I measured the outer hole-to-hole distance with the depth gauge on a dial caliper, subtracted two times the wall thickness, divided that by two, and rounded down. I cut spacers out of half inch black steel pipe so that 2 would snugly fill the gap.

Why 2 and not just one length of pipe to cross the gap? There are two of those crumple dimples in the way, and you can't cut one tube to perfect length and then rotate it to get past them. You can stack two in there, though, with the help of a long needle nose plier.

Thus:

With all the bolts stabbed, I applied blue Loctite and cinched everything down with the air impact driver.

Got that done and then I put the skid plate back.

Almost walked away before I remembered that the battery is still disconnected. I would have figured that out in the morning.

Which reminds me... I made a cool little angle bracket to hold the cut off switch inline with the positive winch cable:

This is the cut off switch mounted on an angle bracket I cut out of some light gauge square tube. I copied the hole pattern from the side of the battery tray on one face and the hole pattern from the 4 corner bolts on the switch housing.

People have different opinions about whether to put a fuse or a switch or nothing at all inline with a winch, and they're all valid options. I like a complete power cut-off to the front bumper so that it's not an accidental arc welder if I crash. A fuse heavy enough to support winch current is probably slow-blow. It would probably work eventually, but by then my arc welding front bumper may have ignited the gas spilling out of the other car. My Superduty has a capped Anderson connector off the battery, so when I want to winch, I just snap the thing together. This switch will do just fine for the same job.

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