Lazy Mary, part due

[ORANGECRUSHer]

Decided my other build threads were getting a little long in the tooth so we got sequels coming out now.

This has been a busy spring and I'm wrapping up the front bumper fab on Mary. I still need to do the finish work on the winch mounting plate which will also have a flag mount built in. I also didn't add some brackets for the lights I plan on adding sometime in the future. I haven't decided if I'm gonna make my own brackets which will take some time to produce a tool and die for or just grab a handful from Appletree next time I'm up there.
I'm gonna end up going WAY over board with the lighting on this bumper. I just don't see how you can ever have too much light. Eventually the lights on my fenders will go seeing how the fiberglass is cracking pretty rabidly now and I want to go with a more paired down fender. So I will be mounting some HF spots which I can eventually convert to HID. These will go on either side of the winch. I also plan to pick up a 24" LED bar that will mount above the winch on the brush bar. And then if I hit the lottery maybe some smaller LED's on the ends of the bumper infront of where the stock lights would be.
So far I've mounted the turn sigs I had on my old bumper - it sure is nice having front signals again! The idea with the amber LED strip in the middle is that it will function as a parking light primarily, but once I order some relays I want it to blink off when the turn sigs turn on. The strip is actually two separate arrays so when the right turn sig goes on the right half of the LED array will turn off and vice versa. I've always been a little leary about people not being able to see my signals since everyone is used to the big gaudy light clusters on modern cars. Eventually, when I get a rear cage bult I will do something similar back there.
The little 'swooshes' on the ends of the bumper are kinda strange I think but it was something I just had to do for some reason. Maybe because it makes absolutely no sense. They will prolly grab little tons of little sapplings when I'm running in the woods that would have just slid off other wise. Regardless, I had to make them, I think just to make it obvious that this was not some bumper bought out of a catalog.
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Brian H.
I may not know everything,but I will try to help if I can
OrangeCrushER Berrien Warrior 2.4L Quad4
LAZY MARY 1970 Baja 1835cc

[ORANGECRUSHer]

_________________
Brian H.
I may not know everything,but I will try to help if I can
OrangeCrushER Berrien Warrior 2.4L Quad4
LAZY MARY 1970 Baja 1835cc

[ORANGECRUSHer]

_________________
Brian H.
I may not know everything,but I will try to help if I can
OrangeCrushER Berrien Warrior 2.4L Quad4
LAZY MARY 1970 Baja 1835cc

[ORANGECRUSHer]

_________________
Brian H.
I may not know everything,but I will try to help if I can
OrangeCrushER Berrien Warrior 2.4L Quad4
LAZY MARY 1970 Baja 1835cc

[ORANGECRUSHer]

_________________
Brian H.
I may not know everything,but I will try to help if I can
OrangeCrushER Berrien Warrior 2.4L Quad4
LAZY MARY 1970 Baja 1835cc

[Bashr52]

Looking good. Did you get you blowby issue figured out?

[ORANGECRUSHer]

I picked up a new Scat sand seal which took care of the problem completely. I riveted the seal in it's carrier before instalation hoping to nip the prob I had with the old one in the bud.

I'm having fun tuning my Kads though. I think I have a pretty good feel for how to get them tuned, it's just a little bewildering the results I'm getting. Maybe I'm expecting too much?
For example, I tuned them the other night after it was warmed up and the ambient temps were warm (afternoon). Set the idle so it rested just a tick below 1Krpm. Sounded good almost impressive.
I hop in it this morning when it's in the 40's outside, (it's parked in garage), and it's hard to keep idling which isn't surprising since there is no choke/enrichener. However, after driving 35 miles to work it's plenty warmed up yet at idle it's loping pretty dramatically.

I ask myself, is this a product of the cooler ambient temps in the morning and I should be content to leave it where it is? Or is there something I'm not yet doing right?
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Brian H.
I may not know everything,but I will try to help if I can
OrangeCrushER Berrien Warrior 2.4L Quad4
LAZY MARY 1970 Baja 1835cc

[mtnroads]

How does it attach to the chassis? To the beam or pan, cage perhaps? I love the way it looks, never to much light. Like the way your using led strip, clever. Are you worried about the load the winch (high placement) will place on mounting? On first glance, I thought swoosh was the foot of a hi lift jack mounted across bumper. Started looking for the way you'd mounted it
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pax
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished....

[ORANGECRUSHer]

It's hard to see but I took a length of 1" square tube and sliced one side off length wise to make and welded that to the front of the tube and then placed the LED strips on the inside of that. That way it acts like a guard for the LEDs keeping low swinging braches or flying stones from damaging them.

I had a regular wimpy aftermarket bumper someone had put on there before I bought it that bolted to the lower head bolts and then the flattened tubes which bolted to pieces of plate that were welded vertically to the beam shock towers. Personally, I don't like this arrangement despite the fact that just about every bumper you see out there does it like this. A but weld to that shock tower will not support the load created by an impact to the bumper and spread it "nicely" into the beam. I removed this from mine which was boogered-on by some hack and placed a 1-1/4" tube (fits inside the 1-1/2" bumper tube) flush against the beam closer to the upper beam tube on the shock tower. This bumper slides over these tubes which only need a #12 SS screw thru them to hold and then are bolted at the bottom through those lower frame head bolts at the ends of the other two supporting tubes. I've seen it done this way a few times and I like it better.
I was planning on mounting the winch lower, more at the mid point vertically to have it pull straight off the upper mounts but it was making it too complicated and possibly stiffening it up too much(placing tube between uprights on which to mount winch). I would have the winch behind the skid plate with w nifty hole cut to mount the fairlead to. This would have given me more realistate on top of the bumper for more gadgets as well. But after welding up the initial structure I realized that it was plenty stout to handle a little atv winch pulling a sub 2Klb. car. Not to mention, I really liked the low profile of my previous bumper which helped when parking in my garage with not taking up so much space. So with the way I reengineered it, there is barely any difference in length added to the front and I'm getting a whole lot more bumper action.
I have some pics of the raw bumper in the earlier stages that I haven't yet put on photobucket. I wasn't sure if anyone would be interested but I can post those up to show I guess.

Another thing I was going to have were some clevises which I had bought already. However, I wanted to get this thing done so I could have some turn sigs for driving everyday and I've been very lucky not having been pulled over for it yet. I figure I can mess up the cheapo rustoleum paint job to weld on tabs for things at any time down the road when I need to.
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Brian H.
I may not know everything,but I will try to help if I can
OrangeCrushER Berrien Warrior 2.4L Quad4
LAZY MARY 1970 Baja 1835cc

[ORANGECRUSHer]

Here is a pic of my modded beam after applying the metal ready product before the POR15. You can see the upper mount tubes which are cut and welded to fit perfectly over the original tower seam. I also added the big plates which run up all the way thru the tubes to act as gussets and possibly places to drill holes and mount things to in the future. I have no idea what.
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Brian H.
I may not know everything,but I will try to help if I can
OrangeCrushER Berrien Warrior 2.4L Quad4
LAZY MARY 1970 Baja 1835cc

[ORANGECRUSHer]

soon, when I get some wifi for the iphone I'll upload those pics of the bumper
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Brian H.
I may not know everything,but I will try to help if I can
OrangeCrushER Berrien Warrior 2.4L Quad4
LAZY MARY 1970 Baja 1835cc

[flashho]

Looking really good. Every car needs a subtle swooosh
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rant _ classified ads with out pics are almost worthless

[ORANGECRUSHer]

Well it's my first ever bumper I've made so I'm excited to see how I did when I test it in the field.
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Brian H.
I may not know everything,but I will try to help if I can
OrangeCrushER Berrien Warrior 2.4L Quad4
LAZY MARY 1970 Baja 1835cc

[ORANGECRUSHer]

_________________
Brian H.
I may not know everything,but I will try to help if I can
OrangeCrushER Berrien Warrior 2.4L Quad4
LAZY MARY 1970 Baja 1835cc

[HERC]

How did the bumper field test go...?
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Herc

[ORANGECRUSHer]

I haven't had the temptation to ram anything yet and I also haven't finished wiring up the winch to give it a try. I'm a little afraid the .095 wall tubing I used was a bit thick for a bumper but I'm hoping the angle of the bumper will deflect force away from the frame. prolly rip the upper tube mounts away from the beam while bending the lower tabs. Lower tabs being the thinnest(weakest) point. But it's looking good so far.
Guess I should take a finished pic some time. Still planning on adding a LED light bar to it in the future. Supposed to be getting one for fathers day.
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Brian H.
I may not know everything,but I will try to help if I can
OrangeCrushER Berrien Warrior 2.4L Quad4
LAZY MARY 1970 Baja 1835cc

[HERC]

That'll be pretty sweet. Free shit for dad during the year always speeds up the build process.
The bumper looks goot.
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Herc

[ORANGECRUSHer]

thanks, I started on my rear bumper saturday yet I'm not too crazy about how it's turning out. I think the problem lies with my bender mainly. It does a 7" bend radius which is great for strength and all but really limits tight cage work. I actually believe the advertized 7" bend radius is a little off to be truthfull. Also I can only do 90degrees at a time and even getting the full 90 is difficult without monkeying with a bunch of stuff which usually ends up with loosing my angle measurement and then over bending a bit which puts lines in the tube. Think I may have to find a way to pick up a JD2 sometime soon.

I'm trying to do an alternative bumper layout that ties the mount point at the shock tower directly to the frame horn with one tube giving a "V" shape instead of the single horizontal bar across the shock towers with two down tubes running to the frame horns. Problem is with my bend radius the back portion of the bumper is just a loop without any flats like I'd like. The two mount points are just too close to each other. But I'm going through with it anyway. We'll see if it's something I end up wanting to keep.

this is kinda what I had hoped to do, this is made by someone on the Samba I believe. I just did a quick search of pics to find something close to what I had in mind.

_________________
Brian H.
I may not know everything,but I will try to help if I can
OrangeCrushER Berrien Warrior 2.4L Quad4
LAZY MARY 1970 Baja 1835cc

[HERC]

I like the way the spaceman7spiff Kid did his. Two bends, no screwing around. There's something about that ass end that looks appealing and that bumper is straight out hard.

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Herc

[no1clyde]

Here is my back bumper I built for my Baja. The top bar has 4 45* bends and the other bars are a 45* and 90* bend.

It is more work but I am happy with it.

Ed