Working On Improving Skiddy’s Rear Bumper

Saturday August 24, 2024 Guerneville CA.

Skiddy work

I thought I needed to pull Skiddy’s bumper back a bit as it looked like it was bent forward a bit so I hooked a chain to a tree and to the top of the bumper. When I pulled the chain out to take the slake out of it, I didn’t expect it to be pulled back so easily. It turned out to be real loose. I had to back into a tree to move it back.

It seems the bumper is in worse shape than I thought. I’m working on a fix for this problem.

I got the air out to blow out the lower part of the bumper so I could see what was going on and work on it.

There were lots of rocks and dirt in there that needed to be cleaned out so I could see stuff.

I backed into the work area and got to work on things.

Broken welds

One of the reason’s the bumper moved so easily was the bolts had come loose, likely because a couple of welds had broken. You can see this broken weld below the bolt and the one on the other side was broken too. I’ll have to beef this part of the bracket up and get it welded back up.

New bracket braces

I’m fabricating some new pipe braces on the top to prevent this. I’m using the white pipe to figure out just where to mount the brackets so I can make them.

With the engine cover which lifts up, there isn’t much room to add these braces, so I have to figure things out as I go and work around stuff.

My metal chop saw got used a lot to fabricate all the little bracket pieces I needed to make to do the job.

Today was spent figuring out how and what to make and making these parts for the project.

I discovered I didn’t have any big 3/4 inch bolts to make my new support brackets so I’ll have to go get some to continue this project.

I knew when I built this bumper I may have this problem as there were no supports on the top part of the bumper and didn’t know how to make any at the time, but I do now.

Nice day.