The_Hammer

I thought the same thing but none of the leaves are broke. Both sides look the same. That’s what I’m thinking. There’s around 340k miles on the truck. I like that setup. I’m going to end up buying new springs later on as these are obviously wore out.

Got my Load Lifter 5000 airbags on today. Look at the poor factory springs lol. The extra spacers are bolted to the spring pack and not just stacked on top of the factory block. The springs were bowed before I added the spacers. I also have no idea what happened to the factory overload spring.

We’re going to park it where our old house is now, after we demo it of course. Believe it or not that land is about 40’ straight up from the river. We always have plenty of advanced notice before the main road is flooded. Even with the tremendous amount of rainfall that Harvey dumped on us in such a short amount of time, it still took 3 days before the main road was impassable. If we are expected to flood at all we will move the trailer out immediately just to be safe. I also now have access to a flatbed trailer with rolling tailboard that I can winch my 12’x20’ Morgan building up on and easily move to higher ground. The end goal is to eventually build a new house on 10’ pilings. That would have cleared this past flood by 2’ and seeing as that was an absolute “worst case scenario “ for massive flooding we will be safe for the long haul. Sometime next week my new Load lifter 5000 air bag kit will be here, no more sagging rear end for me! Well, at least the truck’s rear end won’t be sagging lol. I’m also going to replace the grade 5 mounting bolts on my Reese receiver hitch with grade 8 just be safe. I don’t know if we’ll be doing any traveling anytime soon with the new trailer but I want to be ready if we do.

After being flooded out yet again and our house being in too rough of condition to repair we’ve dicided to get a travel trailer. It looks like this is going to be our new home. https://www.funtownrv.com/product/new-2018-prime-time-rv-avenger-31rkd-767807-29

Thanks guys! @WiscoRedkneck Do a google image search for “weld on hinges” and you’ll get a ton of ideas. As far as the latch goes if your wanting a “slam to close” type of latch then search for “bear claw latches”. A cam lock latch would also work well.

All in all I’m pretty happy with how it turned out. It went from an idea in my head, to a 3D drawing, then from a 4x8 sheet of steel plate to a complete bumper. This is the first time I’ve ever built something like this out of metal. Heck, it was my first time using a mig welder lol. I’m loving the new backup lights.

It’s close right now but I still need to drop the bumper down a little because the tailgate barely touches it when it’s open.

It didn’t turn out as nice as I wanted due to making some mistakes along the way. I need to grind down a few welds better as the bed liner doesn’t fill in imperfections worth a dang.

Lol. I beefed it up with some 1/4” thick 2” square tubing. If I was to do this again I would start with either some 2”x4” rectangular tubing or C-channel. This is my first time ever building anything out of metal so it’s been one big learning experience.

Still need to weld on the top plates and do some more grinding but the hardest part is done.

I’m making some changes to the design, primarily structural. I added a piece of 1/4” thick 2” square tubing to the inside of the bumper, tacked on the mounts and bolted it on the truck. The problem I ran into is that the bar blocks access to the license plate bolts. I also managed to drop the bumper on my right hand last night lol.

I just read through that thread. Wow man, I’m glad she’s ok and doing good.

@Mopar1973Man How long has your mom been on dialysis?

Happy Thanksgivings to all of you as well! I spent the day at the in law’s, we get along great so it was actually an enjoyable time lol. My mom and dad came over for a couple of hours as well. I really like your way of life

Ran into a couple of issues with some measurements being off a little but got it all sorted out. Being my first go round building anything like I expected to have to do some tweaking here and there. Had it mocked up on the truck last night but I goofed and tacked the mounts about an inch too far to the left lol. I should have it completed and ready to be primed tomorrow afternoon.

I’m bedlining it.

Made some more progress today.

More goodies showed up.

Got a late start today but so far so good.

I’m off today so it’s time to start on the rear bumper If this turns out ok I already have an idea for the front bumper lol. This design is only about 50% complete.

I found out that the place in town uses 10ga for the shell and 1/4” for the braces and mounting. Their bumpers hold up fine to deer impacts so 10ga it is. My thought is if I over build the bumper the next thing to give will be the frame.

I was actually thinking about trying to bend them like that but wasn’t sure how well it would work. I’m kind of torn between using 10ga or 3/16” plate at the moment.

Well, the guy that was going to cut everything out for me is bowed up for the next couple of months now so I had to look for an alternative method to get this done. It turns out a grinder and cutoff wheel will do the job quickly and cleanly. This is just a test piece to see if it was feasible or not to use an angle grinder for the cuts. 1/4” plate was pretty easy to cut so 10ga will be no problem. The clean, crisp edges make this somewhat complex design easy to weld up while keeping the lines aligned.

I will be using 4 of these gussets along with the two mounts.