Work in the Garage

OK, first off this is not Erika blogging today. I know it may seem strange, but this entry will not have to do with Milo, the family, flowers, little lambs or anything sweet and darling.

I finally finished the bumper for the 4Runner that I started about 4 months ago. It was my first major welding project so it was kind of a learning experience. There are some things that I would do differently next time, but it ended up turning out really good I think.

I started out by dimensioning the 4runner and making a 3D model of it with SolidWorks. Then I modeled the bumper. From that I created 2D drawings with AutoCAD of all the individual pieces. My neighbor Dave Kitchen has a metal fabrication shop and he let me use his shear, cutoff saw and punch to cut the parts. Dave also gave me all the sheet metal I needed so that saved me a bunch of $$$. Thanks Dave! Everything is 1/8" thick on this thing, so it is pretty dang heavy and beefy. The main center member is 3x4x1/8 square tubing that I bought from Metal Supermarket.


After all the parts were ready I started tack welding them together. As you can guess, they did not fit together perfectly like they did on the computer. I had to do some grinding and cutting to get everything to fit perfectly. For the main mounts I used the existing trailer hitch mounts and cut them off. Those are what you can see sticking down beneath the bumper in the model above. And that black thing in the model is the exhaust pipe.



Above is one of the two main mounts. After it was all tacked up I took it off the 4Runner and laid all the main welds. It was difficult to keep the butt welds straight and looking nice, but I wasn't too worried because I knew I'd be grinding them smooth afterwards.





The last step was to paint it (I went with powder coating) and create some supports for the sides.


Above is a shot from beneath so you can see one of the side supports. I welded the supports to the frame and then bolted them to the bumper.


So, thats about it. It was a fun project and thanks to the donated sheet metal from Dave, I only spent about $160. Now I just need to take it offroad and see if it'll hold up to the rocks and such.