This will take a few weeks until I'm done with everything, but I'm fabbing up new bumpers and sliders for my XJ.
This is a light duty wheeler, not planned to have a winch, although the bumper is stout enough that I could cut in a spot for a winchmount if i needed to in the future.
So far, I have the main body of the front bumper tacked together. The foundation is a piece of 2x6 C-channel, ~1/4" thick. The sides are tapered to 2" tall at each corner, and each side is bent back 1.5" to the rear (bent by scoring the bend line, heating, bending, then re-welding the score after it was where I wanted it). A piece of 1" thick flat bar(what I had on hand) was welded along the top the create a filler strip. It tapers to the rear 1/2" on each side.
From each corner, a piece of 2x2x0.250" wall square tube is used to protect the corners. This flares outward 1.5" on each side from the corners. A 30 degree cut on the rear just looks nice
There will be 1" thick x 2.5" tall D-ring tabs, with will go through the face, to have ~3" flat welded along the main bumper mounts, in addition to a large gusset, and being welded to the bumper face. Made from 1x2.5" flat stock, a chop saw, grinder, and my big drill press. Thats a 1" hole through them.
I will be making the body mount brackets tomorrow. The bumper will mount to the body with two piece of 6" x 17" x 0.25" steel plate, each has 7 holes to bolt to the unibody (2 stock bumper mounts, 3 for steering box mounts {XJs were designed for RHD so there are steering box holes on the right side} and 2 additional holes in each frame rail). I will post a dimensioned drawing I found for these plates.
Theres a few other internal gussets I need to do, then grind it pretty and paint it. Hpoe to be done next weekend.
Then its on to a rear tow bumper, and sliders for the sides. Stay tuned...
looking good! If you want to do a tubed brush gaurd, kinda like mine, lmk and I can give ya a hand with it.
Also, im not sure how you are going to do your rock sliders, but I am going to make some tubular ones for mine here real soon. We could work on them togather if ya wanted some help. My 110 mig isn't the greatest, but it works for taking stuff togather and I have the tube bender here too.
I have a bender, I'm not sure yet if I'm going to add a brush guard or not. I'm tacking with my 110 MIg but will finish everything with my new 170 class 220.
My big thing is time.. getting these done in 2.5 weeks for a trip. I might skip the rear bumper for now....
The rear bumper is delayed for now, running low on time.
The sliders are 75% built, I need to drilla bunch of holes, and paint. I'll post pics of those later..
OK, on with the bumper:
Today I pulled the stock bumper off the Jeep and kind of set the new one there just to make sure it looked OK and fit.
Seems to fit OK to me. (Its just resting there so its not quite centered...)
Next up, I fabbed up the mounting plates. These are made from 6" wide, 0.250" thick plate, each piece is 14" long. They have 6 bolts per side, three in each side's steering box bracket holes, and the three bolts that hold the stock bumper brackets on. I think this is good. Some people add a 7th bolt 4 inches back, I felt it was fine without.
Here you can see the mounting plate welded in place, as well as you can see the D-ring tab. Notice that the 'tab' is actualy 6" long, and extends through the bumper so that its welded all along the mounting plates, as well as being welded to the face of the bumper. Plenty strong.
Here's the bumper from the front.
I wire wheeled and flap disked it, so it is semi smooth and no sharp corners. Its getting its first coat of paint in the garage right now. Hopefully I will have all the paint done tomorrow and will install it monday night
I have the centerline marked front and back, drew out where the box needed to be, then used a drill to punch the corners of the cutout area. I scored the lines with my 4.5" grinder(only size I have at the moment) which accomplished about 75% of the cutting, then finished with my saber saw with a metal blade. The saber saw is slow but nicely controlled and squares up the corners well.
I bet a 2" cutting disc on a long snout die grinder would rip it out fastest.
Here's the finished product on the Jeep. It really improved the front approach angle. Those are the factory fog lights, they suck, but I reused them until I get around to buying something else(spent way too much money this week on other maintenance stuff). I set them up for a different light pattern than normal, thats why they are angled funny..
I had hoped to have the sliders and rear bumper done but have been working on house projects. Sometime I'll finish them. They are together, I just need to clamp everything to the Jeep for fitment and finish welding.
Between the steel, bolts, paint, I'd say I have $125-$150 into the whole project. About $75-$100 in steel, $40 in bolts, $10 in paint.
i just bought a two door xj and want to build a winch bumper and have a stinger hoop and all that good stuff but in the treads iv read no one realy said how they are mounting them to the fame maybe im missing the obvious but how do u do that just drill and tap the frame where the mounting plate would be and line up or is there a trick newbies dont know yet jw so i can try and figure out what i want to do i think im going to plate the fram somewhat but not sure about if it will be up front so any suggestions or answers would be nice thanks
drew
IIRC if you follow Haggar's mounting plate it lines up with holes that are already existing. Also, just for future reference, XJ's don't have frames, they are unibodies.
Yeah. Heck, there's even a link to a CAD drawing of where the holes go. I didn't drill any holes in the unibody, they were already there. several of them are the mounting holes for the steering box. (and the cherokee is designed for RHD, so at least on the newer versions, has the mounting holes on the right side 'rail' as well).
Glad this post got drug up so i didn't have to, lol.
What happened to the sliders Haggar? I am tossing around the idea of replacing my rockers with sliders, what kind did you go with?
Love the lines of the front bumper. How about the rear? do that either?
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