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Well after about 3 weeks of after work and weekends the bumper is done. When I first thought about doing this I thought "how hard can it be?" How naive....I now know why these things cost so much.....with me doing all the shiat work and my buddy doing all the welding and designing it probably took us a total of 25-30 hours.
In the end I paid $150 for the steel. $60 for the various coatings (2 coats rust proof primer and 4 coats Duplicolour bedliner). And about $40 in various other crap. So total I spent about $250 on this thing.
I am extremely impressed with it. As far as I am concerned, not only does it look great but it was PROVEN yesterday on a run I did . Winch was put to the test as was the skid plate and even the front of the bumper got acquainted with a large rock. Everything held up great. With the winch I was pulling a lifted TJ uphill and the bumper didnt even flinch. Not bad considering the design doesnt have the winch really sitting on anything but the bumper itself.
Some may recognize what design I based this off of....the Smittybilt. I prefer mine though because the winch is hidden a bit better. I did however run into a problem with wanting to mount the stock foglights...oh well the Hellas fixed that.
Anyway here she is. Tell me what you guys think....
The plate location is temporary until I relocate it in front of the solenoid box.


Here she is before coating and tubes...I was pretty close to leaving it a stubby and it is STILL an option..I just think the tubing finishes it off nicely.

And lastly, to show you guys some of the work involved:
notice on the left the holes are round? Well I wanted to use carriage bolts. Those shackle plates are 1/2 " steel. notice how the holes on the right are square? notice the square file? Ya...that sucked doing by hand....1 hour per plate.
You can see in the pic where we tried to weld an air hammer adapter to it to help out...didnt work though

So there it is...is it absolutely perfect? No...there are flaws, but no one noticed them yesterday until I pointed them out.
I am biased but IMHO it is one of the nicest bumpers I have seen.
..also if anyone has ANY questions about specific stuff...dont hesitate to PM me....
In the end I paid $150 for the steel. $60 for the various coatings (2 coats rust proof primer and 4 coats Duplicolour bedliner). And about $40 in various other crap. So total I spent about $250 on this thing.
I am extremely impressed with it. As far as I am concerned, not only does it look great but it was PROVEN yesterday on a run I did . Winch was put to the test as was the skid plate and even the front of the bumper got acquainted with a large rock. Everything held up great. With the winch I was pulling a lifted TJ uphill and the bumper didnt even flinch. Not bad considering the design doesnt have the winch really sitting on anything but the bumper itself.
Some may recognize what design I based this off of....the Smittybilt. I prefer mine though because the winch is hidden a bit better. I did however run into a problem with wanting to mount the stock foglights...oh well the Hellas fixed that.
Anyway here she is. Tell me what you guys think....
The plate location is temporary until I relocate it in front of the solenoid box.


Here she is before coating and tubes...I was pretty close to leaving it a stubby and it is STILL an option..I just think the tubing finishes it off nicely.

And lastly, to show you guys some of the work involved:
notice on the left the holes are round? Well I wanted to use carriage bolts. Those shackle plates are 1/2 " steel. notice how the holes on the right are square? notice the square file? Ya...that sucked doing by hand....1 hour per plate.
You can see in the pic where we tried to weld an air hammer adapter to it to help out...didnt work though

So there it is...is it absolutely perfect? No...there are flaws, but no one noticed them yesterday until I pointed them out.
I am biased but IMHO it is one of the nicest bumpers I have seen.
..also if anyone has ANY questions about specific stuff...dont hesitate to PM me....