Finally made some more progress today, gonna take some pics tomorrow and hopefully finish up most of the welding. After tomorrow if everything goes as planned I'll only have a few loose ends to tie up and It'll be finished. I'm really digging the way it looks and it makes me feel like all the hard work is more than worth it.

Lol. exactly. If my bumper comes off by force the Jeep will be unrepairable and my block will probably be sitting on top of the front axle.

Yeah the stuff doesn't even spark when you grind it off. Cleaning up the steel before welding makes a HUGE difference in penetration and weld quality. without the scale the welds punch into the steel almost twice as far as they did with it and they look wayyy better.

I called around to a bunch of local steel suppliers. Ended up being way too pricy to get them to cut me steel so I went to one of the bigger ones and pulled steel from their drop pile. $140 plus change out the door. Not bad for enough steel to build front and rear bumpers along with having a good amount left over.

What I got was a 4'x4' sheet of 3/16" and a 4'x2.5' sheet of 1/4"

 

Here's why you weld it to the frame...
You weld the braces to the unibody that holds the bumper to increase the strength of the unibody. While your at it you sandwhich the frame where they crack near the power steering unit. Look up Intense unibody stiffeners. Copy their design if your capable.

 

I agree with that. HOWEVER, then you can't ever remove the bumper without a huge to-do. I'd like to be able to take my bumper off if I decide to go with something different in the future, need to remove my header panel or any number of other reasons.

My frame is sandwiched on both sides of where the steering box bolts on. One side is braced by the 1/4" plate for the bumper mounts and the other side with a 3/16" reinforcing plate for the steering box area. I highly doubt my steering box is going to pull through or bend the frame there in any way.

As far as the stiffening goes, I feel that the 14 1/2" grade 8 bolts that are either sandwiching or going through the frame to hold the bumper on provide more than enough stiffening to the front part of the unibody without buying weld-on stiffeners. Down the road the entire frame of the Jeep will eventually get stiffening of some form. First will be TNT Unibody stiffeners, then front unibody stiffeners and at some point I'm going to cut a bunch of 1/8" or 3/16" plate to get everything those two don't get. After I finish my front bumper build I'm going to figure out something to replace the stock front crossmember because it hangs down below my bumper and is a flimsy POS. The rear portion of the unibody right before the gas tank will also get a welded in X-brace made from box tube at some point. Rockers will also get replaced with 2x4 or 2x6 .25 wall box tube, that will be completely welded in and then braced to the frame, A & B pillars(I have a C pillar but thats at the hatch with it being a 2 door)

Sorry for being so long winded, I wanted to cover all the bases that my plans have for reinforcing the frame sans a cage(will happen eventually but thats a whole different ball game)

All in all, I think I have all my bases covered. I can't think of anything else I could do to make it stiffer. Stuff takes time and money though.

Btw, I googled Intense Unibody stiffeners and came up with squat. you have a link?

 

Here's where I bought mine. http://www.temper-mentalracing.com/T..._Services.html

Here's another good one.
http://www.rocdogfab.com/index.php?p...hk=1&Itemid=59

After you plate the front with the intense ones, (that also provide your bumper mounting bolt holes), then you do this... http://tntcustoms.com/webV5/xjstiffeners.asp

All these are pretty cheap, or you can make your own and save more. Just time consuming...

 

I'd make my own if I had a plasma cutter, which I don't.

I've seen all of those. Like I said she'll be getting front frame stiffeners along with TNT Unibody stiffeners, and anything not covered by that I'll personally stiffen myself to make sure that I can beat the hell out of my Jeep and not have to worry too much about twisting the unibody

 

lookin good
ill post up next week when mine is done.
anyone with stinger style bumpers? im thinking of c channel with a small stinger about hood height. what do you guys think?

 

Mine will be getting a stinger of sorts whenever I get a tube bender. Probably wont be for a good long while

 

Don't get too good at that.... I may end up bothering you about getting one for me .

 

too good at what?

and getting you one what?

 

exactly lol

 

haha. if someone wants a bumper the first couple people would get cut a madd deal so I can do some experimenting and figure out the best design.

 

If you'd already seen these then why are you doing it Azz Backwards!

 

because I'm not going to wheel the **** out of it till I've got at least unibody stiffeners. That and she's my DD right now. Hopefully over the winter I'll have another car to drive so the Jeep can go in the garage so I can do stiffeners. I'd have to build ANOTHER front bumper if I did the front stiffeners though.

 

Mine would be really easy to make. Nothing fancy just a tube style bumper but no curves. 2 straight tubes front pretty much same for the back with some kind of recovery hook or a spot to put some d-rings. lol

 

It'd be about the same price(what I'd charge you) as if I were to build you something similar to what I'm building. Mostly because I already have the steel for my bumper, but to build you one I'd have to go buy steel.

I don't have the means to make d-ring tabs. so what I've decided to do instead is buy them for $40 a pair. 3/4" x 2" x 5"