- Location
- Grand Junction, CO
Several months ago I picked up used bumper from an RME member for a FZJ Land Cruiser. It was a custom build, by an unknown person, as the guy I bought it from didn't build it. It has been well used, which didn't bother me, as I had plans to refurbish it and the price was right.
The bumper is heavy, very well built. It's got cut-outs for rear lights, D-ring recovery points and holes on the corners for spindles to make dual swing outs. It also came with a Slee 2" receiver hitch.
I wish I would have taken some pics of it when I got it, just to help complete the story, but I didn't. The bumper had been coated in a roll-on bed liner, which seems like a good idea, but it didn't look clean and there were places where it had been scraped off and rusted thru.
The first step was to start getting that rubber bed liner off... I used some paint stripper and a gasket scraper. It wasn't bad, but there were places I couldn't get to. I decided to have a local business sand blast the bumper, to clean up the remaining coating and get rid of any flaky rust that was left over.
Here's my plan to complete the bumper; Straighten out the one bent piece, fill in the top-upper gap with plate steel, weld up some seams that were never welded in original the build, add dual swing-outs with a spare tire carrier and a fuel can carrier and install 2 new lights. I have a bunch of 2" x 2" x .120 square tube in the garage, to build the swing-outs from.
This won't be a quick build, it's taken me months to get here, but I figured it would be worth documenting. I'm not sure how I'm going to finish it, powder coating is $$$ and POR15 seems to fade over time. I do want something that will fight off rust, as the bumper has plenty of pitting and minor surface rust already.
Here's the bumper and the back of the FZJ/Lexus LX450.-
More of the bits and pieces... the swing-out spindles aren't the standard trailer spindles, but rather solid chunks of round steel with brass bushings. The tire carrier spindle is from Iron Pig Offroad. - http://www.ironpigoffroad.com//index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=61&products_id=74
The bumper is heavy, very well built. It's got cut-outs for rear lights, D-ring recovery points and holes on the corners for spindles to make dual swing outs. It also came with a Slee 2" receiver hitch.
I wish I would have taken some pics of it when I got it, just to help complete the story, but I didn't. The bumper had been coated in a roll-on bed liner, which seems like a good idea, but it didn't look clean and there were places where it had been scraped off and rusted thru.
The first step was to start getting that rubber bed liner off... I used some paint stripper and a gasket scraper. It wasn't bad, but there were places I couldn't get to. I decided to have a local business sand blast the bumper, to clean up the remaining coating and get rid of any flaky rust that was left over.
Here's my plan to complete the bumper; Straighten out the one bent piece, fill in the top-upper gap with plate steel, weld up some seams that were never welded in original the build, add dual swing-outs with a spare tire carrier and a fuel can carrier and install 2 new lights. I have a bunch of 2" x 2" x .120 square tube in the garage, to build the swing-outs from.
This won't be a quick build, it's taken me months to get here, but I figured it would be worth documenting. I'm not sure how I'm going to finish it, powder coating is $$$ and POR15 seems to fade over time. I do want something that will fight off rust, as the bumper has plenty of pitting and minor surface rust already.
Here's the bumper and the back of the FZJ/Lexus LX450.-
More of the bits and pieces... the swing-out spindles aren't the standard trailer spindles, but rather solid chunks of round steel with brass bushings. The tire carrier spindle is from Iron Pig Offroad. - http://www.ironpigoffroad.com//index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=61&products_id=74
It's going to be built out of 1/4" and 3/16" steel plate for the main body, then have some beefy tube to protect the front-end. I want something that's plenty beefy and will protect the front end in the event of a crash. Hopefully it will look similar to an ARB by the time it's done.
