Replacement Rear Bumper - 11/09/05

At last, I've got round to replacing the rear bumper that's been bugging me for so long. I can finally stop using the phrase 'I'm gonna replace that because it's rubbish!'.

There's lots of well designed bits to the Samurai but frankly whoever designed the rear bumper obviously never took one seriously off road. The moment I touched the ground with the rear end the tin foil it's made of bent all over the place and the plastic ends tore off!

I've seen all sorts of different bumpers that people have made, usually out of tubing so I had a few ideas but also I had some inspiration close by, the front of my truck!

It's always bugged me that I had to use the tow ball for recovery. It was plenty strong enough but never very easy to attach to and was often buried in mud. I decided I wanted some good recovery points straight from the chassis like my front bumper has.

I still had plenty of the 10mm thick plate that I used to attach my winch fairlead and decided that was the perfect size for making brackets to the chassis and to continue through to make the recovery points. All I needed then was the actual bumper and I settled on 4mm thick 60mm x 120mm box section. I measured up and found that 2.5 metres would nicely replace the original metal bumper and fold around to replace the plastic ends too. It would be heavy but then I did want heavy duty! I headed off to The Forge in Petersfield and placed my order.

The first job was to get the old bumper and tow ball off and have a look at what I had to work with.

Right much easier to see now! With the old bumper off there's nice easy access to the ends of the chassis rails so I sat down and had a good think about it. Half an hour later when I had a numb bum the plan had formed in my mind and I leapt up and headed for the angle grinder!

Here's one of the two brackets being made. It's designed to bolt to the chassis rail where my tow bar used to be and then slot right through the box section to form a solid recovery point that pulls straight on the chassis. You can see I've started drilling the large recovery point hole here.

The next job was to enlarge the holes in the chassis to take large 12mm bolts and also extend the holes right through the rail instead of just the inner skin.

With the holes drilled I clamped the brackets into place and marked them for drilling to match. The easiest way to mark them was to spray some black paint through the chassis holes which gave me four nice circles to work with.

Once the holes were drilled I could stick my nice shiny new Grade 8 bolts through them and check everything out. Hey presto they fit like a dream!

Now came the bulky, hernia inducing part of the job, the actual bumper! I first planned on creating 90 degree corners in the box section but James suggested that I make two 45 degree bends and I'm so glad he did because it looks much better and fits the truck better! I wanted to be sure that I got the corners right so I made a test piece out of wood first. After a slight adjustment or two I got what I was after.

I carefully measured and marked the steel and then after measuring about 15 more times to be sure I set to work with the angle grinder! I cut V shaped sections out of the box to make the corners, leaving the outer skin intact for a smooth corner and maximum strength. Once these were cut I applied lots of brute force and bent the end of the bumper round. Using a ratchet strap I held the total bend at exactly 90 degrees and tack welded it into position. With the ratchet strap out of the way I finished off the welds and stood back to admire my handy work!

With the corners complete I got James to help me try the bumper in place and it fitted perfectly. Good job too because I didn't fancy having to try and modify it! We marked the bumper for where the brackets met it and then carried it back to the bench for the bracket slots to be cut. I wanted to leave the upper and lower skin of the box intact to keep it nice and straight and again for maximum strength. We made twin cuts either side of the bumper and then removed the slither left in between.

Once both slots had been cut we offered the bumper up to the brackets. It was a bit tight at first so some careful grinding eased things along a little until it slid into place right up against the back of the truck. Once I was happy everything was perfectly level I tack welded the bumper to the brackets and then we lifted the whole thing off together.

With the brackets tacked in place I spent 10 minutes finishing off all the welds to make everything bomb proof! I started on the back in case my welding didn't look good but it went really well and by the time I got to the front I was really happy with it not only being strong but looking pretty good too!

The final fabrication job was to finish off the ends of the bumper. With the bumper temporarily bolted in place I decided on a good angle to cut the ends at and then took it back inside for cutting.

Once the cutting was finished I welded some eighth inch plate over the ends and James expertly cleaned it up with the angle grinder.

Here's the complete bumper waiting to be painted. It's a big chunky thing but I know I'll never have to fix it whatever I do to it! You can see the holes I drilled to fit the new lights. I also used these holes to fill the inside with nice sticky underseal to make sure no rust got in there! I settled on Land Rover indicator and brake lights because they're a good fit and pretty tough. If I find something better in future then I might change them but for now I like them.

After a lot of wiping down with thinners to remove any grease and dirt we hung the bumper up from a strong rope and set to work spraying it white. The white finally balances out the white of the front bumper and I think makes the truck look great!

I completely forgot to take a final, fitted picture of the bumper on the truck when it was all clean and new so here's a more recent one with a bit of mud! I think the bumper looks great and now I can jack on it, hang the truck up by it and generally abuse it without worrying about ripping it off! The tow ball and fog and reversing lights will be explained soon...