4X4 TRUCK CAMPER BUILD: Design and Build Custom Winch Bumper

Added: 2026-05-22

[00:00:00]Welcome back everyone. It's a stinking hot 40°ree day here today. So, too hot to do much physical work on the truck.

[00:00:06]So, I just been designing the bullbar. I think I finally finished designing the bullbar.

[00:00:12]Took me a little while as I had to learn how to use Fusion. Okay, so the plan is I'm going to get some 200 by 200 SHs to build this bullbar. So, the center winch cradle will just be a straight bit of 200 by 200 hole cut in the top to drop the winch in fair lead on the front.

[00:00:28]Then I've just been laser cutting some templates for the mounting brackets and for the side wings. So the mounting brackets will be at a 12 mil plate. Nice recovery point down the bottom will bolt to the side of the chassis and then this bracket will go and then there'll be another plate welded along here so we can get bolts in the top of the chassis rail as well. And then the side wings I'll put a nice taper on them. So they they lean back to follow the body lines of the truck and then they taper in on the front and then they also taper up at the bottom as well for a just for looks and for a nice approach angle. Just flip the cab forward to make sure there's clearance. Pretty good. It's close, but there's sort of 20 mil 20 mil clearance right along. The closest bits the actual mounting plates probably about 10 mil.

[00:01:14]Obviously I'll cap the ends of these and I might even return this cap a little bit longer. So that'll help cover this when the cab's down. Just got to finish these bullbar mounting brackets. So I've just zipped out a couple more on some 3M MDF. And I just clamped them on the truck and just text marked all the holes.

[00:01:33]Now I'm just going through finding the center point of the holes and then I've got to mark it onto the sketch on the computer.

[00:01:41]Then I can get them laser cut out of steel. I just went down to the local fab shop. Look what I found. Couple of off cuts of 200 by 200 x 5 mil. Perfect for building my bullbar. So, I know it's a bit rusty, but that's all right. I'll um go over it with a wire wheel, clean it up.

[00:02:05]That took about 10 15 minutes to w them up. We're going to eat better.

[00:02:10]Eat better. Then I zipped out a uh template on some MDF. That was so I can get the curvature right on the front of the truck or easily get two out of this, a left and a right. And then that piece will be the center winch cradle. And then once I've got that shape cut out, I've then got to cut up on an angle like this. So I'll sort of cut a triangle out of it cuz I want to still keep this nice radiused corner. Cut that triangle out and then push that bit up and then reweld it back on.

[00:02:44]So, I've got the bottom one marked out.

[00:02:46]And then you can see it's going to step here on the corner here. Little bit of extra length here allows it when this comes up, it's not too short on the bottom corner of the bar.

[00:03:18]Not a bad curve for an angle grinder.

[00:03:21]I'll clean that up with the die grinder.

[00:03:23]So, I'll mark a line straight across the top of this radius. So, I keep that. And then I'll take 80 mil out here.

[00:03:32]There'll be two cuts. Pivot that up.

[00:03:35]Weld it back on. I finished cutting that angle out of this one. Just put one tack at the end. And you can see as I cut that off, that bit absolutely bananed.

[00:03:43]And then I try and just work me way along, put a few tacks, try and straighten that back out. I'm probably going to have to weld in a couple of little braces, I reckon, cuz I think once I weld it off, it's just going to want to dive the end from the heat.

[00:03:56]It's actually clamping up a lot better than I expected. Most of the way it's clamped up nice and tight. I cut this pretty straight at the very end here.

[00:04:03]It's a little open, but I'll get a few tacks on it and then I'll might put a straight edge on it and see if it actually needs to close in.

[00:04:18]There's probably about 1 mil in it that I reckon. You see it's tight on the end, tight on that end, and there's probably about a mil in the middle, but not too concerned about 1 mil. Well, 120 exactly. Can't argue with that.

[00:04:37]I wasn't really happy with how the weld was going, so I've just ground back those TS on the top. And then now I've ground a V-groove the whole way along.

[00:04:45]That way it's even the end bit of a V-groove. That way it's got a bit more room for the weld to go. So the weld actually penetrates a bit deeper.

[00:05:04]Cannot heat.

[00:05:36]Oh Jesus Christ.

[00:05:40]Oh man, that was lucky. Have you seen that on camera? I got to be a bit more careful. Had a bottle of wax and grease remover there that just caught on fire.

[00:05:49]I managed to uh I heard it. I had the welding mask on. I heard it. Managed to grab it, throw it outside. Jesus Christ.

[00:05:59]All right, I might do a tidy up in the shed before I continue.

[00:06:03]>> A few moments later.

[00:06:05]>> Okay, so I've tidied up the shed. Moved a bunch of stuff out of the way. No flammable items in the vicinity of where I'm welding. I should be good this time.

[00:06:14]And I'll pay a bit more attention. That was freaking scary. Hopefully it's all stayed in position and hasn't warped too much cuz it's a long weld. It's a lot of heat, so not too bad.

[00:06:28]What a difference a bit of grinding makes, huh? That's looking nice.

[00:06:34]Perfect. So, that's pretty much one wing done for now. I haven't got my laser cut parts yet. So, I don't have this end cap yet, and I don't have my main mounting brackets yet, so I can't assemble anything fully. Once the end cap's welded in, that's going to add a huge amount of strength to the end. And then this gets welded the whole way around on the plate. So there's my MDF template if we're looking front on on the ball bar.

[00:06:57]So that sits like that. And then this sits butts into it like that. And we'll get welded the whole way around on that.

[00:07:03]So that'll add a huge amount of rigidity to this wing. This space right here is probably redundant. So I may just once it's tacked in position on the main plate, I might snap that out with some pliers. It's only got a couple of tacks on it. They need to be there. And then same with this end one. Once I got the end tacked on, I may take that one back out and just leave the center one.

[00:07:26]In hindsight, I probably should have got these folded up. I did think about it. I designed it all in fusion. So, I could have actually got these laser cut and folded possibly. I spoke to a local folding company and they didn't think they'd be able to do it. They think they'd need specialized tooling for their press brakes to be able to fold it. So, it was all getting a bit complicated. So that was why I ended up just doing it this way. For the center winch cradle, the SHS actually worked better than folding. It gets pretty close to the edges and uh when you're folding thick steel sort of 56 mil steel, you can't have your folds that close to the edge cuz otherwise they slip into the die on the machine. So they wouldn't have been able to fold up the center piece the way I wanted it anyway. So I already had the idea of using the SHs for the winch cradle. So it was easier just to continue with the same method and make the wings out of the SHs as well. I've got a lot of metal filings to clean up.

[00:08:17]>> Guess who's back. Oh jeez.

[00:08:19]>> Back again. Key's back. I'm back. Tell a friend.

[00:08:24]>> Welcome back everyone. I made a good start on the bullbar without him. So I've got the wings already prepped, ready to go. Got the plates laser cut.

[00:08:33]Chassis plates.

[00:08:34]>> Storms on the roof. Secrets whispered bulletproof.

[00:08:40]We build worlds out of steel. Now they're ruins of something we feel. It's so nice to get away.

[00:08:50]>> Just getting a couple of bolts in them.

[00:08:52]Getting them temporary mounted so we can make sure the alignment's right.

[00:09:00]>> We're just slipping some more packers in between the mounting plate and the chassis just to give it a little bit of clearance so when we weld it all together, we can actually get it back on. drive past the signs over the borders of our mind cuz a beautiful day. Why would anyone take?

[00:09:22]>> These two notches here allow the bar to slide over the chassis rail so it can sit closer into the truck.

[00:09:37]lift.

[00:09:54]There we got to tack weld the wings on.

[00:09:56]And then at some point I got to cut the hole for the winch bear lead. And then I got to cut a big access hole in the top for the winch. But it looks like it's sitting pretty good.

[00:10:06]All the bolt holes line up.

[00:10:14]All right, stacked into position.

[00:10:16]I better flip the cab forward. Make sure it actually fits before we go welding it off. Doesn't get any lighter. Jesus Christ.

[00:10:28]Look like it was made for it.

[00:10:31]This is by a finger.

[00:10:38]ran out of welding gas and uh Kane's got to go anyway. He's got to get home. So, that's about all we're going to get done. We've got it all tacked together.

[00:10:46]We just pulled it off the front. It was all tacked together and now we'll continue another day. I might even chuck it in the ute and take it up to Gain's place.

[00:10:57]>> Several days later.

[00:10:59]>> Welcome back. I'm back working on the bullbar again. I just cut out a couple more templates on the laser cutter. So, as a template to get the holes in the bottom of the bullbar for the winch mounting. And then we got a template for the fair lead. And then this one will be a template to cut a big hole in the top for an access hole and somewhere to drop the winch in.

[00:11:32]Two holes drilled. That is extremely hard drilling. My drill keeps overheating. I just put the drill and the batteries in the fridge. Let them sit in the fridge for 15 minutes and cool down. It's hard going. It is pretty hot today, too. It's probably like 35° today.

[00:12:07]Not too bad. Run the flappy around and just clean up those edges. I might even get the D grinder in on those corners.

[00:12:46]Is this loving me.

[00:12:54]Just a bad memory when you came around.

[00:13:07]>> Bailey hole done. You know, and when you were down, when you were down, when you were down, I made you home. Just stop in just a bad am spatter on so she don't stick.

[00:13:45]>> The spatter that is not the weld.

[00:13:47]>> Yeah.

[00:13:48]They don't want the welds to stick.

[00:13:56]>> We're just jamming a brace in between the chassis mounts. The heat from the welder could twist those mounts in and then we might get it back on the truck.

[00:14:03]It was already pretty tight when we test fitted it. So, we definitely don't want it to shrink any more than it already has.

[00:14:21]Nice one, Gary.

[00:14:24]>> Good cooking.

[00:14:31]Here it goes.

[00:14:32]>> Looks bloody perfect.

[00:14:40]>> Think we're done and dusted. That was it. Last weld. I missed it. Didn't film it.

[00:14:47]>> Got to be right.

[00:14:48]>> Welding is complete. Got to clean it up here. You know, get a bit of batter off.

[00:14:54]Maybe a few little dags just to clean up with the flap disc and stuff on the end.

[00:14:59]Get heaps on these ends.

[00:15:03]Good thing we didn't take them out.

[00:15:05]>> Time for the exciting part. Let's test fit it on the truck.

[00:15:12]plates go one bolt. First test fit of the bullbar.

[00:15:24]The big question is should I build a hoop over here which will have to be detachable to be able to get the winch in and out or should I leave it as is or do I put a light bar here which will kind of give a similar look to the hoop.

[00:15:40]I don't know. Carbon£15,000.

[00:15:43]I did uh think about getting the 20,000 lb. That's what a lot of people put on, but it's only a smaller truck. Like I see people putting the 20,000 lb winch on a unimog. And this is probably going to be like half the weight of a loaded uniog. So I went for the 15,000 lb and it's only I think 23 kilos. I think 26 including all the wiring and everything.

[00:16:03]So it's like 20 kilos lighter than some of those big winches.

[00:16:07]And for the amount you use it, I think it'll be fine. And worst comes to worse, we can always run a double line pull with a winch extension. It'll be fine.

[00:16:15]All right, let's see if it fits in the hole.

[00:16:23]Oh, we're on a winner now.

[00:16:28]Snug as a bug in a rug. Those posts for the power. I'm going to have to shorten those cuz they're very close to the steel. Now I just got to pull it off and then just go over it with a wire wheel.

[00:16:41]I drilled the four holes in the bottom for the winch mounts. And as you can see in there, right at the corners, I've drilled a couple of drain holes in each end.

[00:17:01]Heat. Heat.

[00:17:37]Now we got to shake this for minimum 2 minutes.

[00:17:44]That's 3 minutes of vigorous shaking.

[00:17:48]See, I can feel it in my head when I shake that hard. Epic brain.

[00:18:20]Well, that's it. All done for today. The raptor takes about two hours to dry, but um they reckon it takes about 5 days to fully cure.

[00:18:46]All right, guys. That's it for this video. Thanks for watching. Be sure to tune in again next week as we finally get the tray mounted on the truck.