Samurai Rear Bumper
I got really fed up with the stupid little light holder that Samurais come with. So much so that I decided to take matters into my own hands and make a custom bumper.
The design of the bumper had to meet several criteria:
- It had to be relatively easy to make.
- It had to protect the back end of the truck as this part of the truck is prone to dragging when going over large irregular obstacles.
- It had mount the orginal factory lights.
- Had to be able to support/mount a rear winch.
- It should wrap around the back of the truck and act as nerf bars up to the back of the fender opening.
- It needs to be easy to remove for maintenance.
- It must improve the rear departure angle.
Before getting into the design of the bumper let’s see what we are dealing with after removing the original bumper. This will frame some of the decisions on the design.
The first image shows the driver’s side rear quarter panel. The topmost circle is some trail damage from Green Mountain. You’ll note there is a fair amount of bondo here. I haven’t made my mind up if in the future I will try to use lead instead of plastic filler. I’d need to learn how to do lead work, bondo is easy enough for almost anyone to do. Lead work would last a lot longer and be more resistant to trail damage. We’ll see.
Working from left to right, we have the part of the quarter panel that needs to be removed for the rear quarter nerf bar, we see the part of the body work that “hides” the interior of the frame rail, and the two former license plate brackets that will be removed to make way for the new bumper.
The next image shows the similar parts of the passenger side of the truck. Working from left to right we have the first circle showing the rust damaged and split rear frame cross-member, the frame rail, and the part of the rear quarter that is going to be removed to make way for the bumper/nerf bar. This picture also shows my tires mounted on the “new” 1970′s Ford F-150 4×4 rims that I picked up to mount the tires. I like the fact that these wheels widen my truck’s stance about 3.5″ per side. Of course it means I have to do some work to add wider fender flares.
The next image is from below and shows the silly little brackets that supported the old bumper. They’ll need to be cut off to make way for the new bumper. The distance shown from the end of the end of the frame rail to the rear cross-member is 13″. Plenty of room to mount a winch and possibly carry some spare parts.
Here we see the back side of the driver’s side rear quarter panel. The panel is new galvanized steel from two summers ago, seen minimal winter driving. The best word to describe rust in this area is “insidious”.
Another shot of the rust damaged rear cross-member. I think the best way to deal with this damage is to drive a 2″ Schedule 40 steel pipe through this cross-member to strengthen it. It is a good thing I was planning on cutting off the bottoms of the rear quarters anyway as the only way to place this pipe is through the panels. I am sure that I will have problems getting the pipe to go through the cross-member as well. I’ll probably try hosing the member out with the pressure washer and wire brush and then spray some graphite lube to help it along. It’s
definately super scaled in there. One thing though, if I leave this new pipe long enough I can use it to support the nerf bar extensions for the new bumper.
Here is a another picture from below just for the sake of completeness. We can see lots of rust forming, and some wonderful wiring. It makes no wonder the tre tail lights flash like a discotheque when on bumpy roads.
I’ll leave it there for now. Soon to come: sketches of what we are going to build in here.
Update: Fall 2001.
Here is what I came up with:
The large hole outboard of the D ring mounts are for the brake/turn signals.
The round holes inboard of the D ring mounts are for separate reverse lights.
The square hole in the center of the bumper is a 2″ receiver and the round hole beside it is where the trailer plug goes.
The D ring mounts are made of 1″ x 3-3/4″ inch steel and slide into the frame rails to be bolted through at two places per side. The warp around portion of the bumper was meant to be supported by a bolted in bracket attached to a Schedule 40 pipe put through the rear cross member.