How y'all doin

 

Well santa brought me a pipe bender this year, so I welded up a bumper for my recently lifted (pix soon) 85 DL 5spd 4wd wagon. I used 2" schedule 40 pipe for the big pieces and 1" for the smaller pieces. The local home store sells a budget priced 2" bi-metal hole saw that does a decent job of notching pipe. The pipe is 2" inside and bigger outside, so I really should have used a hole saw that matched the outside diameter of the pipe. But it wasn't that hard to tweak it to fit with the top of a belt sander. The bumper still needs cleaned up and painted, and I might add some tow points, a place to hang the front tag, and maybe a winch. But I thought is was close enought to being done to show some pix.

 

- James B

 

 

Nice bumper.

 

BTW, Whats that white stuff all over the shop floor and where can I get some?

Nice bumper! Get some paint on it before the rust sets in. I'd highly recommend self etching primer (or any primer) even if you are gonna rattle bomb it. I threw 3 cans of spray paint on mine, no primer, and the paint is already falling off and rust is starting to set in.... now I gotta pull them off, sand the crappy paint off, prime and paint.

 

Tube bender? woot! Time for some nerf bars... and a rear bumper.... and a roof rack.... and and and

Looks like you also need a good skid plate. Nice job - simple design.

Very nice! What brand of bender did you get? I am looking at a JD2 brand myself.

Very nice! What brand of bender did you get? I am looking at a JD2 brand myself.

It's a 12-ton bender from Harbor Freight. It was on sale for like $59 (usd) bucks and comes with about six arbors. I just went and looked at the JD2 site and those look very nice. I stuck some exhaust pipe in mine, and it just flattened it; though I hear if you put sand in the tube and cap the ends it will bend thin walled tubing. On the 2" pipe you can see flat spots where the rollers were pressed against the pipe, and see some outline of the ends of the arbor. The smaller pipe comes out really good, though I think the pipe wants to rotate a little as it bends so it took two tries to allign the top brush guard bend. I really need an OA torch so I can twist out the kinks.

 

- James B

Wow, that looks really nice.

 

Any plans on selling some like that for a little extra $$$?

I really need an OA torch so I can twist out the kinks.

 

- James B

IF you just want a small time rig for O/A torch you can get one at Home Depot for about $60. Come with the 2 small tanks of Oxygen and Accedeline, lines, torch and all you need. The O2 lasts about 15 minutes if you got a good welding flame going. The less O2 you use the longer they last

Looks like you also need a good skid plate. Nice job - simple design.

I was thinking of adding a skid plate, but am still debating what to tie it to. Maybe bend a pipe that starts at the bumper, connects to the transport hooks, then ends at the engine crossmember? I dunno. Any ideas how to do that would be good.

 

- James B

I was thinking of adding a skid plate, but am still debating what to tie it to. Maybe bend a pipe that starts at the bumper, connects to the transport hooks, then ends at the engine crossmember? I dunno. Any ideas how to do that would be good.

 

- James B

Could weld on some flanges to the bumper and bolt it on there. Then run the skid plate back to where it bolts OEM style to the main engine crossmember. Should be pre-tapped holes just ready run bolts into.