A Daily Driver Build Thread

percent20 · 05-01-2008, 08:08 PM

Ok, so I want to do like others on here and keep a build thread because I like to read them and some of the input people offer is good.

So to start I have done a couple of things. Recently bought a 5th rim and tire which is a 33 and have 2" BB with a 1" hockey puck BL, i'll repost the BL stuff in here later.

So my next project is going to be a fun one. I am going to build a rear bumper with a swing out tire carrier and built in trailer hitch receiver. We went and purchased the initial metal today. Which was a lot of fun because of what I ended up with.

I had been doing research and found out the average size thickness of bumpers was 3/16" steel and size varied from person to person that built or bought theres. So my initial plan was to get a 10' long, smallest stock we could buy, 4" square tube at 3/16" thick. Then get another 10' of 1.5" square tube at 1/8" to build the tire carrier. All was well and good.

So, we showed up and the 3/16" at 10' is $73.00 which about blew me away. I know it is "cheap", but for some reason was more than i was expecting. So the guy was pointed us to a drop bin where they put all there excess they can't sell as stock. So we went diving through looking and we found something awesome. 79" long 3.5" square tube. It was perfect and at $0.35 a pound because it was in drop bin was perfect, except for 1 thing. Anyway, we weighed it in at 80 lbs and got some stock 1.5" square tube and walked away with a our initial steel for a total of $53.00.

Remember that 1 thing i mentioned above. Well that tubing was 3/8" thick and we figured it'd make a great solid rear bumper. LOL. Here is a picture.

Here is all the initial metal.

Later next week I am going to get a few more things like the D rings for towing straps to connect to, trailer hitch receiver, and a few other little things. I am also going to draw up some basic plans for everything and finalize the final look. Hopefully, next weekend, May 10, we'll be able to start some cutting and fitting and initial welding.

Hope you like this thread. I know I will enjoy adding to it because that means I am doing stuff to my jeep and that is always fun

and if you want to see my jeep here she is.

also, so that you know, I am entry level developer/intern so I don't make a lot of money and am also attending college so that leaves me with a bit less so it won't move as fast as other developers might.

Scotch740 · 05-01-2008, 08:43 PM

Wow thats a lot of extra weight, that 10' section would have been just a little more and 1/2 the weight. I toyed with getting 1/4" due to it being cheaper but went with the 3/16" Either way its cool to see people making their own.

percent20 · 05-04-2008, 09:26 PM

So today I yanked the doors, and stupid me didn't snap a pic. But I didn't want anything to happen to the doors so I decided to build a box to protect them. Here is some pics of the process. Now I don't have to worry about things banging into the main part of the doors.

Now onto finalizing my list of supplies for my rear bumper and tire carrier.

percent20 · 05-11-2008, 04:57 PM

One thing I constantly find annoying with my safari top is it catching and holding water. I got the idea from a friend to build some brackets to run from the front to back to keep it raised.

Basically I took some conduit flattened one end and got it so I could fold it up under the thing you attach the safari top to in front.

Bolted on the bars to it.

Flattened the backend like 12 inches and rounded them so they wen't smoothly around the roll bar.

These are some images from the process.

Before:

percent20 · 05-11-2008, 04:57 PM

After:

Next step is to lay some paint to it and put in a cross part in the center.

percent20 · 05-25-2008, 07:55 PM

So I got the oppertunity to do some real work on the rear bumper today.

Basically, what we did was cut the bumper to the length I wanted it. 60".

We then cut some 1/8" square tubing to do the initial mounting points where the old bumper moutnted and welded that to the bumper.

Here are some pics of what we did today.

This isn't the prettiest of welding jobs, but will hold

as we do more the welds will look better. We are very much out of practice by a few years.

As tommorow we are going to continue and add some more bracketing to mount the bumper in 2 more spots. Once I can go get some more metal we will be able to do what is needed to mount to the frame itself.

Also tommorow we are hopefully going to get the reciever put into the bumper too. Will be sure to take lots of pictures of that too.

Please let me know what you think

percent20 · 06-01-2008, 01:30 PM

I only have one picture of the next step because my phone was messing up and didn't get it working properly until we were 90% done getting the hitch reciever in.

First here is the pic.

Basically we just cut a hole in both sides and slid throughthe reciever. We should be back onto workin more on it today so i'll post more pics of it.

To do the hole we got a hole saw and drilled a round hole through both sides. We then ligned up the reciever to the hole and drew and outline around the square tubing over the round hole and took the all saw and got busy taking out the corners. Once that was done it was a matter of grinding down the edges and fine tunning until we could slide the reciever through both sides.

Next step after that was we trimmed off some of the back of the reciever so it didn't go into the jeep and welded it in place. I think total time to get the reciever in and welded so far has been about 10 hours between me and my dad if not more.

Today we are hoping to weld on plate to secure the chains and finish the brackets to bolt the bumper on.

The final thing after that is to do the shackle mounts for the shackles. I have the metal just going to be a pain to cut it properly.

randonlee25 · 06-01-2008, 01:34 PM

Hey bro I applaud your effort. Practice makes perfect.

percent20 · 06-02-2008, 11:58 AM

So we were able to make some more progress yesterday on the rear bumper build. Here is the progress pics.

This is what the reciever looked like just after we welded it in and trimmed off the back bit of the reciever. Looks really really really stupid because it sticks out so far.

On this one we have the plate that we cut for the chains of a trailer before we rounded the corners and welded it on. We did this with out any measurements on accident and luckily all turned out well.

This is how it looks after we rounded the corners.

Well this is it after we welded everything in. Yes we did clear away the rust where we welded

Another picture of it after we welded it.

On this we went ahead and added more supports to bolt to the rear of the jeep.

YAY it is attached.

The next few things are brackets to bolt the bumper to the frame on both sides and capping the ends. Then onto the tire carrier.

**JeSimmers** · 06-02-2008, 12:36 PM

I am anxious to see the tire carrier build, Its great when someone can build there own products for their Jeep....keep up the good work!

percent20 · 06-02-2008, 12:56 PM

I can't wait to give it a shot. We are still scratching our heads on a couple things on it because we don't know exactly what we want the final to look like and do. There are a couple of ideas to make it really cool for add-ons.

Dogman · 06-02-2008, 01:51 PM

I'm hoping that's a poser shot and that you really wear gloves when you weld

I applaud you for fabing your own stuff.

PBR · 06-02-2008, 03:33 PM

Nice goober weld haha

. Good job though! Tire for a tire carrier!

Gloves are for girls!!!

percent20 · 06-04-2008, 12:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dogman

I'm hoping that's a poser shot and that you really wear gloves when you weld

I applaud you for fabing your own stuff.

yeah it is a poser shot.

Quote:

Originally Posted by REDTJ35

Nice goober weld haha

. Good job though! Tire for a tire carrier!

Gloves are for girls!!!

goober welds are our specialty for now until we get back into it. I personally do very little welding right now until i get more experience doing it.

percent20 · 03-04-2009, 12:34 AM

So it has been most of the winter since we could work on the bumper. Mostly we were kind of worried about messing with the torch since we didn't know what we were doing. But after some research and some guts we said wtf why not.

So here are some pictures. I should have been more active, but as a run down here is what we did.

I got a piece of steel from scrap that was 4" x 3/4" x 5' and my bumper is only 3" x 3" so we had to take the torch to cut out some joints to add to put through the bumper. I didn't get any pics of this because it was mostly goof off and test time with the torch to get it going.

Next I spent like an hour grinding away to get rounded edges and get rid of a lot of the slag and crappy looking stuff from the torch cutting.

Finally we cut holes in the bumper and slid them through, not so easy as it sounds. took probably 5 hours alone to do that because of a few mistakes we made that had to be fixed. Future note. Even though you measured twice to cut once make someone else measure twice too. While my measurements were perfect the location was wrong

Next is to do the frame thing no big deal and then the tire carrier am thinking can knock it out in next couple of weekends.

So here are a couple of pictures.

If you have any questions feel free to ask.