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'93 Sport Expo/ trail rig build




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Mine is not a 1st Gen but its Green :)
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agreed the first gen sports are wicked wicked trail machines
3 door Ford suv's are never worth much, but neither were BII or gen I Rangers and even the prices on those are going up WAY UP
I am trying to save as many square bodies as I can

My wife definitely doesn't support my affliction to save RBV's,, Mustangs, Jeeps and old Ford trucks. She keeps my quotas pretty tight!
 












Making slow but steady progress. Since I made the wings of the bumper out of 1/8 plate, fighting distortion is tough. You can see I'm laying short beads. I've been laying a couple short beads on each side then letting it cool.

On the outside corners I'm just laying fat stringers with the MIG so I've got some material to grind and shape. I used my 110v MIG for all the work on the 1/8" plate and am super happy with how it did. For all the 1/4" plate welds I used a 7014 stick to burn in.

In full disclosure, despite my best efforts, I've got about an 1/8": of droop at the tips of the wings. I'm going to do my best to flame shrink the top side to get it out. It's not enough for most people to notice, but it still bugs me

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Really liking the look of that bumper! Have kinda the same idea in mind, but mounted on the outside of the frame rails and tubing out the sides rather than entirely boxey...and a removable stinger...but that thing is looking really good!
 






Really liking the look of that bumper! Have kinda the same idea in mind, but mounted on the outside of the frame rails and tubing out the sides rather than entirely boxey...and a removable stinger...but that thing is looking really good!

Thank you! I also thought about tube outers, but decided against it because I use the bumper on my CJ quite a bit as a high lift jacking point. So I elected to give up some aesthetics for functionality. I will throw some tube at it with a short stinger that will also serve to truss the wings for some added strength while jacking.
 






Here's final fit up. Welding and grinding came out pretty good. Now I need to order my winch! I'll cut my slot for my cable once I decide on cable or synthetic and get the appropriate fairead. Think I'm also going to trim the top of the fairlead plate as well to break up the straight top line of the bumper.

Other things to do next are; build the stinger, build a bolt on skid plate, widen my tow points to 1" and cap the frame ends.

I also need to decide on trimming the bottom of the core support and the bottoms of the fenders. I think it will clean up the look. Just not sure how flimsy my inner fenders will get without the bottom bolts.
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Bumper looks good.

As for the Fender flares on mine I did have it but I took them all off. I was lucky as they were all mounted on the underside of the fender. For the rear I am planning to shorten the rear Bumper and hack off the rear part right behind the rear wheel. Better departure angle.
 






very nice! Well built and well done
Now you need sawzall to trim up all the metal and plastic that is exposed :)

What type of winch are you thinking?
 






Last night I pulled the trigger on an Engo XR10 with synthetic line. I've got an older 9000lb Engo on my Jeep and it's been reliable. Only issue with it was water in the solenoid box. The XR10 is supposed to have better waterproofing. Picked it up off Amazon for $375.
 






Sure would look good with a 'Limited' grill :)

(yes, I happen to know where one is)
 






Sure would look good with a 'Limited' grill :)

(yes, I happen to know where one is)

Funny you mention that. Since I'm think I'm going to have to hack up my grill to fit the winch, I'm kicking around the idea of fabbing up something that resembles what they did on the new Bronco R. Of course I'd leave the headlights..
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yeah buddy!
My BII has a grill space alot like the new bronco hmmmm......
 






I've been finalizing my decisions on shackles and thought I'd bring you guys along. I've got a background in engineering projects that involve rigging, so it's a big deal to make sure I'm at least in the realm of being safe.

Here's some great baseline information about 4x4 recovery: Pirate4x4.Com - Extreme Four Wheel Drive

I have ultimately selected 5/8" Crosby 209A shackles. First off these are US made and have an actual weight rating. Here's a link to the sizing info: Crosby® 209A Alloy Screw Pin Anchor Shackles - The Crosby Group

I selected the 5/8 shackle because it's rated at 11,000 lbs in a straight line pull, with a factor of safety of 4.5. This pairs nicely with my 10k winch capacity for straight line pulls. For 45 degree pulls you reduce capacity to 70 percent and 90 degree pulls by 50 percent. This is a bit of a compromise, but since there's a 4.5 factor of safety, my risk of failure is pretty low.

Here's a side loading chart: https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...FjAEegQIAxAB&usg=AOvVaw2VkDw6feeaI0c748ZkKRKc

When using shackles, it's also important that the load is spread evenly across the shackle pin. In my case, for a 5/8" shackle, the pin diameter is 3/4 and the throat width is 1.06". Since my recovery points were tabbed from doubled up 1/4", I needed to increase this to 1". I stole @Brian1 's idea to make 1/4" spacers to weld on to get my 1" width.

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We've all heard the horror stories of winch bumpers being torn from rigs because stock bolting arrangements were used. Since I'm using only using 4 bolts in the stock locations, I went here to estimate the shear strength of my bolts: Load Calculator | Fastenal

For 1/2" UNC grade 8 bolts, I'm coming up with an estimated shear strength of 9k lbs per bolt. So a total strength of 36k lbs. Should be plenty. I'll plate the ends of my frame horns for a little extra torsional strength, but I have no concerns about that bumper staying put.

Winch is supposed to show up on Friday! Got to wrap up my last little items so I'm ready to mount it up!
 



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Core support and inner fenders trimmed up. Much cleaner looking
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