This was the original concept for a rear bumper that I made for Teebes about two years ago.
After much deliberation and sketching, I decided to make an 8"x4" tube the main structure component instead of building it out of sheet steel. One of my goals was to make the bumper a simple but extremely strong and robust bumper.
The upper 'wings' will fill in the section below the tail lights. The pic below doesn't have them trimmed to the proper length.
Here's a cell phone pic when I got the first bumper bracket on. 3/8" It's not going anywhere.
I worked on some FEA stress analysis since I knew that putting an air tank in the rear bumper could be potentially dangerous. Originally I didn't have internal ribbing, but it was added after the first round of FEA to keep the tube from expanding at the center.
Here we are working on the center tube... Eric, my fabricator and friend, is cutting the hole for the 2" hitch.
Aligning the center section.
Center section tacked in place.
The end caps are very important here, as they will each be holding back thousands of pounds of pressure of compressed air, plus they will be supporting any trailer and winching loads.
Eric did a great job of getting 100% penetration welds all around the end caps. They will easily withstand the stresses being applied.
Below, hitch is sitting beside the bumper, ready to be welded in place.
After we weld in the air tank bungs, we'll do a pressure test to 150 psi. The tank should be good to about 200 psi before yeild, but my operating pressure will only be 100 psi.
For the swing-out, I have a sketch of what will be done. I also already purchased a heavy duty hinge from EMS off road:
That's it for now, it will be a few weeks until we can do a test fitment with the bumper wings. Then a few more weeks after that until we can complete the swing-out. I'll keep this updated as I make my slow progress.
