Designed and built a custom front bumper

[briphi]

I just completed designing and building a custom stubby front bumper, and wanted to share my experience.

I wanted fairly specific things in a front bumper: stubby, light weight aluminum, stinger, fog light provisions, no frame chop, and no need for a winch. I couldn't seem to find this combination, and they all seem to cost > $1000 now.

For the stinger portion, I found the Rugged Ridge XHD bolt on and it was cheapish ($240) so I bought that first and designed the bumper to fit that.

I used onshape.com (which is a free in-browser CAD/CAM program) to design the multi-part assembly. I had no CAD experience before this, and it was fairly straight forward. I then exported the drawings to sendcutsend.com, and they did the laser cutting and bending. The cost was about $300 for the bumper, $50 for hardware from mcmaster-carr. Not bad!

The thickest aluminum they offer is 0.25", which seems strong enough to me. I don't have the means to weld, so it's all bolt together. I did have to buy a harbor freight surfacing tool ($60) to fix the scratches and bend lines and give it a nice brushed metal look. I clear coated it for now, but I might get it line-x'ed in the future.

I was pretty amazed at how easy and inexpensive this stuff is now, I think it turned out great!

Sponsored

 

[Cips]

Looks nice! I'd wanna paint it or line it but overall looks good.

 

[Grayhound]

Looks great! Reminds me of an @Tredsdert project!

 

[Dyolfknip74]

I made a steel one for my JK years ago. Had help from a friend and it turned out ok. Made some design errors but still learned a lot, including welding.


Are you not concerned attaching steel to aluminum? If that stinger gets any pressure it will tear it apart, no?

 

[briphi]

I made a steel one for my JK years ago. Had help from a friend and it turned out ok. Made some design errors but still learned a lot, including welding.


Are you not concerned attaching steel to aluminum? If that stinger gets any pressure it will tear it apart, no?

The stinger is primarily bolted to the frame horns. The secondary attachment to the top feels pretty strong. It sits only 1/4” above the frame, so if the stinger bent it downwards, the frame would support it. If something did happen to it and it got messed up, I could just have another one made for less than $300 and still save money over buying a commercial one!

 

[munkeymike]

That's a really cool service and way cheaper than I thought it would be. End product looks professional.

 

[CaJLMetalHead]

it looks great!..

thanks for the tip about sendcutsend.com

 

[2K6TBSS]

Very nice looking bumper.

 

[Medsker]

Looks great! I love the ingenuity of it!

 

[Deleted User 38384]

The thickest aluminum they offer is 0.25", which seems strong enough to me. I don't have the means to weld, so it's all bolt together. I did have to buy a harbor freight surfacing tool ($60) to fix the scratches and bend lines and give it a nice brushed metal look. I clear coated it for now, but I might get it line-x'ed in the future.

I was pretty amazed at how easy and inexpensive this stuff is now, I think it turned out great!

I was going to say be careful if you put a winch on there, but 0.25" is actually pretty thick overall, and any issues you might have had with it bending or flexing if you do attach a winch on to it, are going to be less worrisome with the bracing you put on the inside of the bumper.

I went the opposite way, I did the most simple design I possibly could:

0.5" 6061 aluminum angle. I drilled some holes in it to attach it to the frame mount, and then later on I used a hole saw to make those two and a half inch holes for my (JK Wrangler) fog lights, and then another few holes to mount my d-ring shackles. Everything attaches together with grade 8 steel bolts.

I've used the winch twice times now if I remember right, with it attached to this bumper. Once to yank a fellow forum member/buddy of mine into a more favorable position when he was going up a crazy difficult trail. And then second time I was stock high center on a rock with no one around to help, so I hooked on to a very small tree which thankfully did not break.

If you do ever put a winch on there, just as some added bracing, you could always put a steel plate (or two) underneath the mounting points, so that any stress put on the aluminum would be applied over an area, and not just on the location of the bolts. The other option is get some really large steel washers. Which is kind of the route I ended up taking.

Because of the curve of the inside of the aluminum angle, it added a lot of strength to the aluminum bending when using the winch, but it also made it very difficult to install bolts anywhere close to it without grinding down the middle there first. I figured all of the pressure is going to be put on the back two bolts anyways so at least for now this has worked out successfully for me.

Regardless, looks like you put together a very nice front bumper.

I will say you do have the perfect layout that if you do it right, you could actually put the winch behind the front bumper of yours. I believe they make braces that allow you to stick it in between those two frame mounting points.

 

[briphi]

I was going to say be careful if you put a winch on there, but 0.25" is actually pretty thick overall, and any issues you might have had with it bending or flexing if you do attach a winch on to it, are going to be less worrisome with the bracing you put on the inside of the bumper.

0.5” is beefy! I don’t intend on adding a winch. If I was going to, I’d just buy a steel winch plate, then design the bumper around that. I wanted to go light weight, and this bumper without the stinger weighs in at only 17 lbs!

Also, if anyone designs something on sendcutsend, look around for discount codes. I found one for 15% off that worked.

 

[briphi]

If anybody is interested in cloning my design, I can try and figure out how to link you to my onshape cad file.

Sponsored