Custom Rear Bumper

Thanks for the input! I guess that strikes out the Steel-it. I'll get in touch with a few places here in town and see how much they'll charge. If not, I'll just spray paint it well and then maybe in a few years I'll get in blasted and powder coated.

 

Very interested to see how it all turns out! Going to make me say shut up and take my money. Haha!

 

One more question for everyone: is it worth making the rear bumper shell removable by itself without removing the hitch and large side plates that hold the hitch?

My original plan was to weld everything together making the bumper shell, hitch, cross tube, and side frame plates all one piece. I figured that the rear bumper shouldn't get removed much at all. The one downside is if it gets rear-ended or hit then the whole thing has to be replaced, but I'm already beyond off-the-shelf parts anyway.

What do you think?

 

I don't think removable is a big thing. Only stock is really using removable parts, any aftermarket bumper will have to be entirely replaced. I think it would be more work in the long run and if you get hit, it might jack up more than just the shell in my mind.

 

Makes sense - thanks for the input!

 

I got a few more sections welded up on Friday and ground down today. I did the middle face in two sections and only the upper is currently welded in. I’ll cut a section out of it for the hitch to slide into, and then weld the lower piece in. I also picked up the 1.75” x .250 wall DOM tube for the hitch and it is BEEFY! Probably overkill, but the fab shop didn’t have .188 wall and I wasn’t 100% confident in .120 wall.




I also have to put a strip on the back of the top face, between the bumper and the truck. My original measurements were off, and my 4” stock didn’t go as deep as I would like. You can see daylight between the rear of the bumper and the truck, so a 1.5” wide strip welded in should fix that.

 

I hit a bit of a setback last night - I mocked the bumper up and and realized right away that the whole thing had warped when I was welding. Each end was bent down. Looking back, I should have seen this coming by doing all the welding on the bottom side of the top plate. You can see it here, especially on the passenger side:


I'm thinking that my best way forward is to shim up the passenger side to make the gap even at both corners of the tailgate. I had already been thinking about a thick (1/2"?) piece of plastic to mount on top like the OEM one does to make this bumper looks more factory, and to provide some texture for grip. I think this will help as well by lessening the reveal between the tailgate. I could also thin it down in the middle area to make the top of the plastic more level.

The bumper shell fits up to the existing mounting plates well.

This hitch mounting setup will work really well too. The 1.75" tube fits perfectly in the hole on the hitch side plates

And I made some 1/4" plates to tie the hitch into the tube, and box into the bumper shell as well. This is looking from the rear:

And from the front. Those front angles should match up to the inside profile of the bumper shell.


While I'm disappointed that I didn't think the welding out enough to prevent the warping, I do think the overall look is pretty good. There are no crazy shapes or angles so it stays factory looking, and its not disproportionately small on the back of a big truck. It seems to fit in while still offering higher clearance, and allowing an angled bedside trim.

 

@RepeatPete are you cutting the bed sides at all to match the contour? Looking good btw

 

Thanks!
Yes, on an angle. It should look something like this:

 

There's no going back now.


What do you mean you don't have two hitches?

 

Looking good. I'm in the market for a high clearance bumpers too.

 

Thanks! Yeah, I couldn't find anything that I liked, so I guess I had to build one!

I cut the old hitch off, cranked up the spare to see about where it sat, and tripped the side plates at an angle.

I wired my new license plate light to a weatherpack connector off of the factor wiring. The bumper shell is currently mounted with two bolts on the top for ease of removal while I'm still welding and grinding.

 

Looks pretty good.

You may be able to warp that back with a torch on the top of the bumper. Get it almost red hot then let it cool. If you don't have a torch, you can do the same thing by welding a bunch of beads across it (front to back of the truck). It'll be a lot of grinding, but you can decide if it's worth it.

 

Wow, nice work!!!

 

It’s definitely coming along very nicely! Can’t wait to see the finished product

 

Not sure I like the smaller bumper, kinda old fashioned, but I like watching the design progress. Can't wait to see the finished product.

Just a thought, what are your plans for the old bumper? I had mine replaced after an accident last year, and they installed an aftermarket unit. It looked OK when first done, but I have found that it is not as well built as the original. I would like to replace it with an oem chrome, if I can find one close to me. If you are anywhere near NE PA, and are willing to part with your old one, PM me. Thanks.

 

So the metal will expand when heated, and then contract more than it's previous state upon cooling - am I getting that right?
I am going to weld the bumper shell to the frame plates which have my new tube and hitch, and was hoping that I could clamp the center section of the shell to the tube and draw them together a little. But if I can get access to a torch, I'll try that too.

Thanks guys!

 

The metal doesn't expand when it's heated, basically, the molecules get all loosey goosey in there. It shrinks as it cools when the molecules tighten up. Sheet metal guys use friction to heat panels that they want to shrink. They are basically controlling the warp. That's what you need to do, on a much hotter scale because your metal is thicker. You have to heat a section, let it cool, then look at the effect and heat a different spot, and repeat until it comes back into the shape you're looking for.

It won't be perfect, but it can take the worst out of it.

Google heat straightening steel for some theory and some youtube vids of ideal ways to heat it.

 

Thank you!
I'm in TX, so pretty far from you. In addition, I cut up the center of the bumper to get it over my new center tube - you can see that in the last picture in post #40.

 

OK, thanks.

 

I tried straightening the bumper by welding beads on top like @bradleykd suggested above. I turned the amperage up and welded some fat, slow beads from front to back, and took measurements on the truck before and after:
The left side came up 1/16", and the right side came up 3/16". Not too bad, but grinding those welds off sure is a lot of work! I still need another 3/8" on the right side and 1/16" on the left to get everything level; still trying to decide if it's worth that much to me.

 

I spent another lunch break welding beads on top of the bumper to straighten it out. After today, the gap from the bottom of the tailgate to the top of the bumper is:
Driver’s side: ~1 15/16”
Middle: 1 7/8”
Passenger’s side: ~2 1/16

Not perfect, but good enough for me! Thanks again @bradleykd

 

Not bad man! You're dedicated, that's for sure!

I don't know if you are using a hard rock to grind those welds, but if you don't have a backer plate and some fiber discs for your grinder, you should pick some up. Knocks the weld down faster, it's quieter, and they last longer than flap discs while still being cheaper.

 

I've been mainly using flap discs with the occasional grinding wheel for hard-to-reach spots, but I never knew those existed. I'll have to give them a try - flap discs wear out so quickly.

After I cut the frame plates on an angle, I cut out half-circles to fill in the hole left by the OEM hitch tube and then welded on a strip to continue the bent edge.




And then got the tube reinforcements welded in too.

 

Very nice, thanks for pointing me here. Do you have any pics of the current overall rear look?

 

Unfortunately due to having a baby, catching COVID and having complications, and freak Texas snowstorms I haven’t made much progress.
This is a pretty bad picture, but the best I’ve got besides the ones in this thread, after I chopped my bedsides:
https://www.tundras.com/threads/hand-bending-sheet-metal.79591/


I decided to make the safety chain loops easy and picked up some 1/2” steel rod. I then finally filled in the area under the hitch receiver because the bumper shell and frame were welded together as well.



I’ve cleaned up most of the welds in the past few days, and I’m really hoping I can complete the finish work and finally get this thing painted this weekend!

 

It's been a while since I posted some progress on this bumper, but I've been knocking off little items towards getting it finished up.
I wanted some reinforcement for the sides in case I drop the truck on some rocks one of the rear corners, but more realistically because I've got a plan for a swing-out bike rack that will attach to the bumper. Some pieces of 2"x2"x1/8" angle worked nicely.


At this point I was really ready to be done with this months-long project and I was tired of having a rusty rear end. So I pushed towards paint. My plan was to do a base coat of POR-15 and then top coat the front and top face with paint, black or color-matched. I knew the POR-15 would cover all the nooks and crannies of the underside structure really well and I've had good luck top coating over it in the past.
I got the bumper all sanded, cleaned with acetone twice, and prepped with POR-15 metal prep which etches the metal (and takes forever to do right!). However, when I opened my mason jar of POR-15, it was all dried solid.
It was already around 1:30AM at this point, so I broke out two half cans of Rustoleum black (one gloss and one semi gloss) and got to painting!


So not sure what my updated plan is, I guess I'll give the spray paint a try and when it starts chipping off I'll probably end up getting the whole thing blasted and powder coated.





It still needs a few more coats, the trailer plugs have to go in (still need a bracket for the 4-pin connector), and I'm still planning on a plastic top piece to add grip and make it look more factory. Always more to do!

 

It looks great!!!!

 

Yes looks great! I’m having a professional make me custom bumpers and I’m still gonna rattle can it. I live in the south so I can embrace the patina and just respray every so often. Good on you for being covid recovered and doing an awesome job diy-ing a nice rear high-clearance bumper. Thanks for sharing your journey. Embrace the antibodies and test your work out! Healing vibes, I’m an RN and have seen the after effects of covid. Covid recovered here and still not a zombie so I’m ok.