The die is cast: DIY weld rear bumper and tire carrier (True North Fabricatiions)

[Bob98SR5]

Gents,

I just happened to talk w/ Kryptoroxx one day and started talking about trucks and all. Told him I was looking at bumpers and he clued me into this little outfit that he patronizes named True North Fabrications. I was instantly sold on their philosophy of DIY weld your own bumpers. Many years ago, I said that the company who can do this right will win the bumper wars (sorta). I know, not everyone has or has access to a 240v welder, but if you do you are in great shape.

So today I received a single box weighing 141lbs, according to the writing on the box itself. I took work off a little early because, well, it was like Christmas in October. I drug it into the garage, went to dinner, took care of some honey-do's and then I opened the box.

All metal pieces and parts bags were fairly neatly wrapped. While I had no intention of welding, I wanted to touch and see the metal to get a sense of the quality. Some pieces are thicker than others, but all are professionally cut. The company designed the pieces to fit into each other with a series of tabs and female holes in others so they can join and be welded together. Unfortunately TNF does not have any videos online, but I did see a competitor's *front* bumper in two YT videos that gives me an idea of the level of expertise and effort it takes.

Of all the designs out there that are DIY weldable, this one caught my eye because the lines are much like the venerable BruceTS bumper that started this craze.

This will be a very sloooooow build because of two reasons: 1) I barely have Ar/C02 gas left (under 500psi). Maybe enough to tack weld most of it, 2) I come home later at night and I'm freakin' tired (getting older lol). Oh and 3) the cheapest place for gas out here is only M-F from 8-5 and I take the miserable BART into the city to work. And no, I'm not going to f@#$g Airgas. Thieves, all of them!

So tomorrow is inventory day. No packing slip, so this step is important.

On another note, the owner of TNF put on the company's Instagram page that he's sold the business to [url=https://www.srqfabrications.com/]SRQ Fabrications[url].

[4x4mike]

Cool Bob. It looks like you'll have a nice project to get building on.

[Kryptoroxx]

I can put you in touch with the former owner pretty easily. I can help a little as I took some pictures of the install as well. Here are some below. Not sure if it helps but hopefully it does

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[Kryptoroxx]

Not sure how that last photo made it in but I'm on my phone lol.

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[Bob98SR5]

I can help a little as I took some pictures of the install as well.

Hey John,

Thank you, I'll let you know if I need the owner or your help. Right now I've only had a few mins every night this week to check on the parts vs the diagrams. I'm not even done yet lol.

I've looked over the diagrams and some of the inner welding (between tight spaces) concerns me, but I'll worry about it when I get there. One thing I know I'll do outside of the instructions is to weld a flat piece of stock across the two main bumper halves so it gets welded perfectly straight. Nothing will drive me more crazy than a bumper that isn't perfectly horizontally flat.

Did you use a 220v welder?

[Bob98SR5]

The missus had a little impromptu jewelry show yesterday (2 days notice), so my Sat was shot. However when we returned, I did get a chance to study the next few steps a bit more to plan out what I'd do this late morning and early afternoon. Part of the day too was setting up my stations. Inside the garage was the welding station and outside my rear garage door was the cutting and grinding/flap disc station. A few notes on tools:

- There is no way in hell you're going to weld this this without a 220v welder. For this and possibly future stuff, I bought a Harbor Freight Titanium 220v welder (the green one). It can do aluminum w/ an optional gun and TIG too. But I'm MIG'ing this one.
- Clamps are a must. So far I've been using C-lamps
- I have an old cheapy Black and Decker fold out workstation that I've neglected. The wood has rotted a bit from absorbing water, so its not flat anymore. But the station itself works and its *perfect* for this kind of job.
- A vice has been really handy especially the first step (welding a nut onto a holed plate)
- Eye, vapor/dust, and hand protection. And stupid me always finds a stupid excuse to do all these things wearing shorts. I burned my calf today when a piece of metal came off when cut and it bounced off the station and hit my leg. Yes, I branded myself.

Ok with all that said, I only completed two steps today. Mainly because of the set up and also because I want to properly sand down the parts w/ a 120 grit flap disc to get the parts down to bare metal. Those of you who remember the Biodiesel Benz knows I incessantly talked about grinding down to bare metal. The results will be night and day. Meaning, the welds will come out nice and you'll hear that sizzling bacon sound when you make the welds.

I'm following the manual (mostly), so if you have it, this will make more sense.

Fabrication Step #1 calls for grinding off any holding tabs. I haven't found any. Next bullet is advising to chamfer edges where they are butt welded together. Got it. Third bullet was advising to remove any oils or rust. Flap disc'ing will do the trick too.

Fabrication Step #2) One pre-welding tasks that needed to be done was to cut some of the mounting pieces down based on whether or not you have (or will) a body lift. Since I don't plan on a body lift, I cut down the maximum amount of metal down. There were a total of 6 pieces. One of the pair was quite long. I took the flap disc to the pieces and cleaned the metal of all shavings, metal splinters, etc. and made sure that all of the edges has bare metal showing. The parts that needed to be cut were 10, 11, and 12 (2 of each)

Fabrication Step #3) The next thing that needed to be done and welded was to run 4 bolts through 4 plates and secure the accompanying nut onto it. Next, the instructions called for welding the nut with a few tacks. For the first one I tacked 4 spots. The next 3 I thought that 3 were enough. I may go back and tack along all sides but it appears I got some really good penetration on the ones w/ 3 tacks, so I'm hoping this will be good enough. Expert welders: how's the penetration look? If not good, what's the adjustment needed?

I'm really glad this step was first because it allowed me time to get used to the welder and make sure the settings were on point for the thickness of metal. Also, and something I'm trying to get used to, is this Titanium welder has this odd (to me) delay before the wire comes out. Someone on YT explained (or theorized) that the delay is because the machine is shooting out a little of the shielding gas to allow the spark and ignition to have proper shielding. It's definitely not as predictable as my old 120v Lincoln. Like I said, just will take some getting used to.

Fabrication Step #4) Next step was welding the two halves of the bumper. I had to think a bit on how to ensure that all three faces of the adjoining points could be perfectly held together. But first the adjoining edges per instruction needed to be chamfered. Chamfering is much easier when the metal is nice and thick, so I didn't sweat it *too* much. I just made a few passes on each of the sides on as many places the flap disc could fit. Then I brought it back to the front of the house and laid it on my brick patio and a long flat board. I C-clamped in strategic places, ensuring that it was flat. I decided to tack from the inside part of the bumper because I was able to C-clamp the top piece down the easiest. Mercifully I tacked the inside so completely flat with all edges perfectly aligned. Woo hoo! I let the metal cool down a bit for about 5 mins and then returned and tacked the top side too w/ a few tacks and let it cool down as well. Note: I wasn't tacking for penetration, but for the purposes of aligning the two pieces as perfect as possible.

Oh some tips: I used the metal I cut from the first step and ran it across both halves of the bumper to make sure it was flat flat. This technique worked out pretty well. Also when chamfering, make sure you don't chamfer too much material off to the point the flat surface is no longer there. I took a 120 grit disc and make a few light, even passes. You can see in the pics how I did mine. That should be plenty.

Just for grins and giggles, I wanted to see how well I chamfered the adjoining, butting main bumper halves. For a guy that hasn't welded anything significant since about 2010, I think I did pretty well

Pics attached.

[Bob98SR5]

Ground down tacks to show what my chamfering looks like on the top side of the now tacked bumper halves.

[Kryptoroxx]

Looks good to me so far! I'll be watching.

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[4x4mike]

Looking good Bob. Even though they're tack welds, you're getting good heat through the plate.

[Bob98SR5]

I made a little boo boo. Fabrication Step #5 called for tacking the frame supports, which will fit and be welded into the bumper. I admit: I was totally careless here as I was in a rush to finish and take care of some home stuff. So this Step #5 clearly states to make mirror copies of the mounts. What I didn't do is orient the bottom piece correctly. The bottom plates have 1 rounded corner. That side should be on the interior side and be facing each other. What I did was have each of those rounded corners facing towards the right side. So the right mount won't fit.

The second thing I could've done better was to shave one of the vertical pieces a little bit more. Things like this you won't realize until you start welding the pieces together. I took two pics to illustrate that one of the pieces I cut off a bit too much (but still workable) while the other side I didn't cut enough. For the side I didn't cut enough, there's not a whole lot of free space for the weld to bond to both adjoining pieces. Luckily this is the side I need to redo, so I'm going to shave a little more material off of it so there's adequate space for the weld. Note, the second pic is in the following post.