Building a bumper

[Nevada S. Smith]

I used Rustoleum rusty metal primer and paint on my egay custom bumpers and it looks pretty good and only cost me about $15-$20. And if you scratch them, you can just rattle can it back to perfection. I painted them outside on a pair of saw horses. I wiped them down with acetone first and went to town. If I remember right, I used a can of primer and paint on each bumper. Since you have a tire carrier it may take two cans each.

[bdgn01]

It's about time for an update! And yes, I'm starting this off with another bridge picture:



When last we left off, the welder couldn't meet up with us, so we got a bunch of welds cleaned up, drilled holes for seatbelt mounts, and other smaller tasks accomplished. This Sunday I made it over the river by 10:15 and we were backing up to his shop by 11.

The first task was to mount up the swingarm. We clamped some plate to the top of the bumper, moved things back and forth and up and down, and finally found the right spot. He fired up the welder and got to work.



Once that was in place, we greased and assembled the swingarm cups and bearings, pressed them in with a socket, and set it onto the spindle. Not bad!



There's a droop of maybe 1/2" on the far side of the hinge, and even after torquing the castle nut down just a hair of vertical play in the arm.



I wasn't concerned about the droop all that much, because the next part was welding a receiver to the other side. After lots of consultation, we decided to cut a flat plate and weld that to the face of the bumper, and then weld a section of angle iron to that to act as the shelf it sits on:



While that was cooling down, I had him weld my seatbelt bungs into the rollbar, the spare tire plate onto the standoff, the bolts for the Hi-Lift to the bumper, and the bolts for the spare.

Then, we pulled the whole bumper off to weld two plates of angle iron in behind the outer bumper mounting holes–one side to the frame and the other to the flat plate across the back of the frame. This should provide support for the weight of the tire and bumper.





Once that was all done, we threw everything into the back of the truck, paid the man, and headed back to Brian's place. There we drilled out the mounting holes for the bumper, put that back in, mounted the swingarm, and tested the height of the receiver on the tailgate: too high! We had to chop about 1" off the top of the receiver to clear the tailgate as it came down all the way, but there's still plenty of backstop left to keep the arm from hitting the back of the truck. The last thing we did was drill a hole for a receiver pin; by then it was 6PM and time for a swim in the river.



When I get home this evening I'll shoot some pictures of the swingarm open so you can see how much clearance there is from the standoff and the hinge.

So, next steps are:

1. Pull everything back apart and clean up all the welds.
2. Bondo up any holes and sand everything smooth.
3. Etching primer on everything (POR-15 on the frame welds)
4. Some kind of black high-impact paint to finish everything off
5. Find a lock solution for the jack
6. Pick up some lug nuts for the spare
7. Find some kind of mounting solution for the license plate
8. Run wiring to the license plate for lighting
9. Mount it all back up and go!

[bdgn01]

I almost forgot: On the boat, out in the middle of the Chester River, we were coming up on a great little marina/restaurant. Brian's wife said casually, "Isn't that a Scout on the dock?" Sure enough it was. Possibly the most beautiful Scout I've ever seen, as a matter of fact. A barn find 80 with a halfcab and factory overdrive. We found the owner, who told us he pulled it out of a barn in Pennsylvania with 22K on the odometer. He fixed some minor rust in the halfcab, some fender damage in the rear, and had it resprayed the original color. He still has the hardtop packed in cardboard.

[bdgn01]

OK, as promised, here are some shots of the swingarm open:



This is looking down at the hinge with the tailgate open:



This is a shot of the bumper, face-on, with the tailgate dropped. You're looking at the face of the receiver:



Now, the only issue I see so far is that one of the bolts for mounting the spare is angled inwards, which makes it impossible to get the spare on (notice the upper left bolt):



So, we'll have to grind/drill that one out and put a new one in. But, given all the things that could have gone wrong at the last minute, that's a minor quibble.

[customtronic]

Why is it when I see Nevada Smith's post and see that he's from Winslow, AZ I immediately start singing an Eagle's song in my head? lol

"Well, I'm a standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona and such a fine sight to see.
It's a girl, my lord in a flatbed Ford slowin' down to take a look at me"

[scorp1us]

Originally Posted by customtronic

Why is it when I see Nevada Smith's post and see that he's from Winslow, AZ I immediately start singing an Eagle's song in my head? lol

"Well, I'm a standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona and such a fine sight to see.
It's a girl, my lord in a flatbed Ford slowin' down to take a look at me"

Dunno, but that song as a flat-bed Ford in it. :-(

[Karl Bader]

Bill, Brian,

The scouts are both looking good! Been awhile since I've seen them and I miss the wrenching sessions! Looks good!

Karl

[bdgn01]

So, I haven't had time to make any progress on the bumper since we mounted it, but I did find out the hard way I'm going to need to install some kind of limiting strap to keep the arm from swinging all the way around and hitting the body:




D'oh!

[bdgn01]

On Saturday I got rained out of doing a bunch of other Binder-related stuff, so I went out into the garage and fooled around with my new license plate bracket.I bought one off Amazon for about $13 with LED lights, and picked up a tap and die set from Home Depot for $20 along with some stainless Allen-head bolts.





The first thing was to figure out where to put the mount. It has to be closer to the center to clear the depth of the jack below the crossbar, so I mounted the spare and figured out how much clearance I had to play with. Then, I marked off holes, pulled out the drill, and put in two holes.

Working with the tap was really easy; once I mounted it in the chuck properly, I put a little oil on the threads and we were in business.



Then, with the bracket in place, I had to run power out to the swingarm. I disassembled the tailgate and pulled apart the license plate light. The two-wire leading out there was black with an industrial-coated disconnect, which meant it was aftermarket. The ground lead out of the light was just screwed in behind the mounting plate for the bracket itself. I took apart my spare tailgate to see what stock looked like, and as I suspected it was just a green power lead ending in a single black socket, which grounded itself to the metal of the mount. Knowing what I had wasn't worth saving, I cut it, spliced the hot wire to the light, grounded the other to the frame, and tested it. Success!



All it took at that point was splicing in some 14gauge threaded wire, soldering it together, heatshrinking the connections, and adding a pigtail connector to the ground. This got screwed in behind the bracket and then I zip-tied the wire around the swingarm until the whole thing gets painted. Then I'll tap two or three 6-32" holes on the back side and add some plastic cable clamps to keep everything neat.



I'm real happy with the light. It was inexpensive and it's bright as hell compared to the old one. And I think it's about time I found some decent bolts to mount my license plate. Four years of zipties is ridiculous.

[Comanche Scott]

That came out really nice! Great job.
Something about a good ziptie. It's hard to let go.