Front Bumper Ideas - Thoughts, suggestions?

[Buckshot]

Ok- here's what I came up with and I apologize in advance for the quality of the design - I was trying to crank it out in a hurry while at work.....

And, if you look at the side view above, the added piece on top is a side view of the grill guard design below:

Also - 1 other thought - are you going to have to make major changes to this to mount to vehicles with body lifts? Seems there's more of those out there that would take advantage of this bumper than not, right?

 

[Cali' Explorer]

sberkel, that's almost exactly what I'm shooting for. A couple of differences between my plana nd yours. First, On the tubing that wraps around the head lights, I am not going to have lower bars, it is going to go up and around the lights from the middle similarly to yours, but on the outside it will connect back down to the bumper around the side. I also wasn't planning on adding all the cross bars (I'm mainly worried about rocks and don't like covering up Head Lights). The location of the lights is almost exactly what I planned on, but since I plan to have the middle sucken for a Winch Mount, I was going to mount the Lights to the Tubing that is on either side of where you have them (again, I wasn't going to add lower tubing, I figure that the Bumper is a strong enough tie in point).

I was also planning on making it changeable for Vehicles with lifts. Basically, the plan is to make the mount standard but just have it so that you move the mount up and down on the inside of the frame the number of inches of the body lift. This will be more aparent when I have the design ttoally completed, that looks nice though.

The nice thing about this base bumper, there's a lot of different things you could do with it to make it look the way you want.

 

[Buckshot]

Any updates Cali?

 

[Cali' Explorer]

Sadly no. Life's still too hectic for me to work on this right now. But, hopefully it will be calming down some in a week or so. I will keep you appraised as soon as I get back to this.

 

[FROADER]

The bumper looks great!
To get a better approach angle see if you can make it a little mor like this:
I raised the mounts and gave the bottom end of the bumper an angle. Just an idea.

 

[Cali' Explorer]

That's a good idea, the only issue I see with that is that the area that you now have angled is where the bumper would need to mount to. Since I haven't pulled my bumper yet (due to the horrible weather out here), I don't know the exact measurements on the locations of everything. I am basically waiting for the rain to quit so I can pull the bumper and measure everything properly. Once that is done, then I will know exactly where the locations all stand.

 

[FROADER]

Still raining up there huh? It finally stopped down here. At least until Sunday from what I hear. Good luck with the bumper.

 

[Cali' Explorer]

Well, its not raining today, but its still mighty wet. Hopefully one of these weekends it will not be raining so I can tear it apart. As soon as it happens, I'll let you guys knnow =).

 

[Savage Wolf]

nice design, its close to what i'm working on, except mine is on paper wish I knew my way around cad software, at the moment my first prototype will probably be tape and cardboard, one thing I do see that you may have problems with is the winch area, you might want to check the specs out on how big one really is vs the width of the frame rails, i have a warn 8000 (thats has a broke motor) but looking at the size of it vs the frame it has me worryed alittle

 

[Cali' Explorer]

Savage-
That's interesting that you have an 8000 Warn. Out of curiosity, would it be possible to get the primary outer dimensions of it (the most outward dimensions that would cause a problem with this bumper design) and possibly the bolt pattern dimensions?

I don't have access to a winch so I have nothing to compare against. Thanks.

 

[Savage Wolf]

Savage-
That's interesting that you have an 8000 Warn. Out of curiosity, would it be possible to get the primary outer dimensions of it (the most outward dimensions that would cause a problem with this bumper design) and possibly the bolt pattern dimensions?

I don't have access to a winch so I have nothing to compare against. Thanks.

www.warn.com

the xd9000i is ~
Winch Dimensions: 21.8" L. x 6.3" D. x 9.94" H.
(553mm L. x 160mm D. x 252mm H.)
Mounting Bolt Pattern: 10.0" x 4.5" (254mm x 114.3mm)

 

[Buckshot]

Cali - Any updates? Just finished my BL, now it's time for some bumpers.....

 

[Cali' Explorer]

Sadly no. I think it might be a while until I have the time to tear my bumper off and take measurements. I can get the main body measurements, but don't know about time to tear off the bumper.

Now, if someone on here wanted to get the necessary measurements for me, I could continue the design. What I would need is the width and height of the Flange that the bumper mounts too. How far out it protrudes from the most forward Body line (this would be the front of the grille area most likely. As well as the distance between the bumper mounts. With these numbers I can measure some of the other items on my X and come up with the appropriate dimensions for the bumper.

Section? =)

 

[Castees]

Hey Cali,
Very inspiring bumper! Have you, or anyone else, gotten the measurements yet? If not, I'll try sometime this week to get some for you. I just put a CALMINI bumper on my wife's Xterra, I'll use it's mounting points as a baseline for yours. After the final design, how long do you think until you could actually produce this beauty? Keep us posted!

 

[Cali' Explorer]

I personally have not gotten the measurements necessary yet. If you could get them, that would be great. At this point, I don't have any clue when I'll have time to get them (life has become even more hectic than it was before). Producing it could also be a bit of time. I'm dealing with some health issues right now that have made me change my work schedule. Cutting back on work plus increasing health bills is never a good combination, hehe.

My hope would be that I could produce this over the summer when I don't have school. My initial plan was to completely produce the bumper myself, but there is a guy out in my area well known for making custom 'Yota bumpers, so I may compare the price of having it made myself vs. taking the design to him and having him make it, but we'll see.

In either case, when I have everything finalized, I will be offering all the dimensions of all the parts as well as suggestions as to where to take the parts to have them made if you want to take the project on yourself. Everything in the final product will be tabbed and what not so you can basically assemble the whole thing precisely without welding then just weld along the lines so to speak, hehe.

I'll keep you posted as I have time.