Jeep XJ Overland Build Ep03: Rear Bumper Upgrade, Sliders & Tie Ins

Description

After I cut off the rear quarter panels on the Jeep, the stock bumper offered no protection as the original plastic end caps had nothing to clip onto. I couldn't afford an after market bumper so I decided to make my own end caps out of box section and add baffles into the stock bumper to give it a little more strength.

I also built a tie in bracket set that ties the rear cross member into the frame using the factory tow bar mounting points. Again this is a kit you can buy buy if you choose too but I decided to make it.

Thanks for watching.

Big thanks to the guys at Ruff Stuff Specialties for providing us with some of their frame stiffeners, review and installment videos coming very soon -

Center Stiffeners -https://www.ruffstuffspecialties.com/catalog/XJRAIL.html

Front Stiffeners - https://www.ruffstuffspecialties.com/catalog/R2093.html

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Video Transcription

hi there guys it's Mike remember see he bushcraft it welcome to another video working on the Jeep again today you probably saw in the last video when I introduced in the garage that I'll be working and I talked a bit about a bumper that I'm working on and that's what we're gonna carry on with today in this video this is it it's - milk and it's the original bumper off of the Jeep Cherokee although you can probably see if you're familiar that I have made some changes to the ends when we touched on the Jeep in one of the previous videos you would have already seen this bumper completed and on the vehicle so technically we're actually back in time and the reason being is that I film these videos prior to filming the video about where I was with the Jeep and the project and I think I mentioned in that video that hasn't happened yet at this point that I would be doing this bumper and have a few videos on it if you remember I talked about the cut and fold model which is where you get rid of the rear quarter-panel just behind the wheel there people do that for clearances when they're off-roading but the stock bumper is just a bit of c-channel it doesn't look particularly good just having that exposed see travel that offers no protection the fact this is the original attachment but as soon as you do that cut and fold Marty you lose all of the metal that this would clip onto so I've done away with these and I've made my own out of box section and this is the change that I've made here really up close so we've got three Millward box sections so that's how thick the Box section is and it's 60 by 60 mil I've got two pieces here stitched welded together down the middle I've used p38 to do most of the filling on it just to tighten it up and if we look at the inside you can see that there's another piece of five mil box that's welded to the back of the C Channel and it comes in and it's welded all the way around to everything else so when it can't be pushed in very easily at all without folding the bumper it's you'll get an idea of how the bumper works if I just slot it in here and we've got a decent amount of protection there on that corner now and if this is tied into the frame you might actually be able to pick the vehicle up with it before I get started on the bumper though I'm gonna make a tie-in kick that the bumper can bolt onto if you look at the frame here you can see the four bolts that the bumper would connect to then behind that exists the frame rail it's connected to the actual vehicle you've got some excess metal here and one of the mods that a lot of people do is they cut that out so they can see up inside the frame and then they're able to slide box section in which is then bolted to the holes that already exist underneath the frame that tie into the tow bar and when the whole thing's actually connected together it makes for a very rigid solid setup [Applause]

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there we go it's looking good managed to clear it away quite cleanly and this outer cut hold I've made is flush with the sides of the inside of the rear frame there so I'm going to shoot off to the well to a friend of Mines he has a place in the village onward from here there's a lot of metal fab and I'm gonna try and get some box section it can slot in there nicely probably gave something like five mil so I'm back from the fabricators and while I was there a friend of mine offered to cut out some of the faults clearances inside the box with a plasma cutter which just made things much easier for me so this part slots in like I say and then this part is gonna be welded on to that like so so we have three bolts holding that piece of box underneath four bolts holding that with the bumper connected to it I wanted it to be longer than that

but if you look at the original brackets that go in there to hold the tow bar onto the frame you'll see that they've got like raised points so you can't just slide a big old bit of box in there respect it to keep going but what I will do at some point is come back to this and see whether on the underside of the frame I can build an extended tying kit that goes down to the anti-roll bar mounting point and then perhaps comes off there and connects to the cell nice so one thing I do need to do and I should have done it first is take out a section here on the bottom because this needs to come through there on the inside like that and the poke out front there and then actually tie the whole bottom section in [Applause]

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the last bit we have to do is obviously put this in it either side mark the holes from underneath and then get those drilled out probably oversize them actually so there's a bit of leeway for things to jig around because this isn't going to directly be threaded into [Music]

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so it's the following day and the things have moved on a little there I've had a shave I had to go out and do some stuff so I had to leave this and go but I've come back too early this morning and got it all finished and I thought I'd show you how they look now they've changed quite a bit as you can probably see we have five holes on the bottom and remember the original inserts they have five nuts on them and then there was a raised part that was because there's like an exhaust bracket hanger on the driver's side or passenger side if you're in the States or any other country so I had to make that groove basically there well I did the same there as well that one is where it's needed that one it isn't actually needed but it just ended up being very similar so I made them longer and I also cut nuts off of the original insert and welded them so this is now the new insert so the bumper connects here and then this portion here will connect to the rear tire carrier looking at it I've gone the long way around a short trip so all I really needed to do is have the box section this long cut a piece underneath there for that piece inside there that should frame basically that needs clearance and again if we look at this we don't actually need that cutout either I could have just had a hole there back to the bolt off for the leaf spring this is one solid piece of box section and just screwed the bolt back in to go through a hole and it would have been stronger but I don't think for the job at hand this is a it needs to be any stronger than it is now it's already kind of over engineered in terms of the amount of metal I've used but this sign is a little bit different actually because you have the filler pipes for the fuel tank going through like a big oval piece of metal in the frame so it has to stop there one thing I won't be doing with these though is painting them and you might think that's a really stupid idea and not to paint something like this because it will just rust and cause problems but with things like this going inside the frame I tend not to paint them and the frame on my Nicholas is filled with this stuff here this is dinner troll this is an amazing product really and you can't expect it to stop really flaky terrible rust but if you've got a bit of surface rust you can't reach it it will stop it growing I've used this product for a long time now and have nothing but good results from it so I filled the insides of these with this product here and then use tatra seal which is like a very heavy wax grease so I'm going to paint all of these with this stuff here let it all set so it does have a setting time it needs to kind of harden and but more like a wax that you can kind of push with your finger so it doesn't go rock-hard and then they'll be ready to insert it if I just didn't cert them in with this still wet it's just gonna come off and I don't really want it to do that so let's get them painted so these have got a heavy coat on them now and then we're actually already starting to set you can fit it down with a little bit of white spirit or thinners to get this stuff to kind of move a bit more fluidly but I just prefer to use this stuff here to do the creeping and getting in the nooks and crannies really good for getting in between spot welds and seams when you've got like two pieces of metal that meet is what it's really designed for but this is a good heavy coating it's gonna protect it once that's set you'll be able to touch it it won't come off in your hands it'll be something you can actually pick up and use but it'll be soft like wax you know it won't be wet like it is no and that'll sit inside the frame a little bit of grease in between the mating surfaces put the bolts in and we should be good to go and that should be able to stay in there and much like the rest of the frame at the back which is rust free this should be - because obviously that stuff is accident really just doing these sorts of Prevention's quite important really if you want a vehicle to last a long time so we'll leave this overnight and I'll see you in the morning

it's a chilly morning had to fire up the old space heater just to warm this place up a bit colder in here than it is outside

but these are looking great they're actually all dry the wax is set still tacky and obviously soft to the touch but doesn't come off on your fingers anymore I've also painted the bumper as well this morning one reason why I got the heater going just to warm the space up you never want to do spray painting in a cold damp environment and I use an etch primer and then used a truck bedliner

to do the rest and it's come out really nicely also done a bit of work on the tie area to put in some extra pieces just to stiffen up the actual beam so acts a little bit more like a cross member between the two inserts that we're gonna put in so everything's ready to go and we'll get the Jeep reversed in and get these installed [Music]

the last bolt just do them up snug not crazy tightly I sure enough behind and then the horror begins all over again even worse they but it's sitting out a little bit further than it was before cuz obviously we made that tie-in plate in the back there and it's all in there great and it's all lined up properly at the bottom I found some 10.9 s as well turns off strength bolts so I think they're all 10.9 apart from one here which is like a cheese Bowl so I could be in Q cheese bolt that needs replacing but I replaced that as soon as I find a 10.9 so that's it tying kit completed rear bumper completed two jobs I've been wanting to do for a very long time and I've done them as well as I can really I think the actual tie-in kit could even made a lot quicker and with less materials using one piece of box like we talked about earlier but I think as it stands it's very strong it's far too strong really for its intended use so the bumpers looking great as well the n bits are brilliant the actual protection on the rear quarter-panel I'm really happy with the way that turned out and amazingly the two mil baffles they have strengthened the bumper tremendously when you pick it up by those n bits the n bits barely move at all they do still move a touch but hardly at all so I'm amazed how much that's actually strengthened it because before you can actually manipulate the angle they shatter because the C channel was just a piece of seat so what we're going to do next is remember that very last bolt on the tie in that we inserted in the back of the frame that is going to be connected to an L section so a piece of angle iron maybe five mil and a bit of box will come off of that and we'll weld it to that piece that's sticking out that protects rear quarter-panel so it's all linked together really nicely so I hope you enjoyed this vid see you very soon in another one thanks again guys take care

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