Building a family camping / adventure 4x4

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:00]All right, we're doing a down and dirty used parts, used stuff we have laying in our shop.

[00:00:07]I do build bumpers for a living. I do build bumpers for these specific rigs for a living.

[00:00:12]But, we're just going to take a bunch of scrap, bunch of things we have laying around, and see what we can come up with.

[00:00:17]So, I had this old piece of tubing hanging out.

[00:00:23]And I took some half-inch flat bar that we had scrapped left over from another job.

[00:00:28]Cut a bolt pattern in it. Tig welded those two together.

[00:00:32]We're mig welding it into the frame.

[00:00:34]Now, we got to start building the skeleton of the bumper.

[00:00:39]And I think what I'm going to do is make it if you look, see if I can get this on camera.

[00:00:46]See how the grill comes out to a point?

[00:00:49]I'm going to try to make the bumper taper from headlight out to the middle and back.

[00:00:57]Plus the whole bottom of the fender's been removed. So, when we bought this rig, it had an ARB front bumper on it that was for a Land Rover.

[00:01:05]And they'd already cut it. So, what I'm going to do is I'm going to come all the way up into here all the way around.

[00:01:13]I removed this lower section of the turn signal.

[00:01:16]And I'll probably go in and remove this as well. But, this is just a fun little project, something to do. This is a rig that's going to tow our boat. Show you guys the rear bumper.

[00:01:30]This is the bumper that I actually do for production.

[00:01:36]The only thing different on this that I don't do on others is um I put a round seven receiver for the trailer wiring in there, and I put an Anderson plug in it.

[00:01:46]So, the Anderson plug uh is going to be for the winches. So, got nice little side steps.

[00:01:54]The winch will be on a cradle that will be pinned down inside behind the back seat in the rear cargo area.

[00:02:02]And then it'll just stay there. If you ever need it, you can put it in the front or you can put it in the back. So, we'll just Like I said, this is just something for fun.

[00:02:09]Bunch of used crap. We're going to play music super loud and just get this portion done, get the bumpers painted so we get on to the next couple things so we can haul our boat and go fishing.

[00:02:18]All right. So, got my tow point stuff all ready to rock.

[00:02:23]Like I said, I'm doing stuff for fun, doing things different. I'm actually out of 1-in flat bar at the moment, but I had Oh, hold on. I should probably turn down my buddy Grizz.

[00:02:34]That's right. Got the Your Race streaming in the background.

[00:02:40]So, anyway.

[00:02:42]So, I took two pieces of half and I have to do this all the time. Matter of fact, I've do I've done two pieces of 1-in together and I've done two pieces of inch and a half together making equipment parts and stuff, but So, that's bolted on there. Obviously, this is bolted on here. Now, I just put a small little fillet weld in there, nothing crazy.

[00:03:04]And the reason it's only one weld at the moment, so now that this is bolted on here, I can start skinning this, coming up with what I want to look like and what I'm going to do.

[00:03:15]And then when I draw the bumper, I can put the poke through of the bumper on this now, get that done, and then once it's made, these should be cooled off enough.

[00:03:27]They're still pretty hot.

[00:03:29]I'll throw them on the TIG bench and then we'll do a nice weld on all four sides and should be good to go. So, now we need to get on to making the middle of the bumper.

[00:03:40]All right. So, we're looking okay here.

[00:03:43]Got our tow points. Got our double pass set up on that deal. Now, I'm trying to make this bumper really really small, really light, and this is system is very this system right here is very very very similar to what we normally run on these except for they have a bracket that goes down the frame this way.

[00:04:04]So, in order to get the angle that I'm after when this thing makes the return back under the headlight, I might have to actually go in here and ditch this bolt hole, or I can just redrill one here and then cut this area of the tow point off.

[00:04:20]Not 100% sure.

[00:04:22]So, the air compressor is just warming up right now. I just drew this little piece right here in the computer.

[00:04:29]So, I got to make these two top wings.

[00:04:32]You know, obviously one will go there and one will go over there.

[00:04:36]But, like I said, I want to make this thing small. Trying to carry the theme of the dimple dies like I have on the rear bumper.

[00:04:42]There will be a trailer hitch. I probably already mentioned that, but there'll be a hitch that comes through there for the winch cradle.

[00:04:47]So, once the compressor's all warmed up and ready to cut, I'll get these made, bent, tacked on, and then we got to decide what we're going to do here.

[00:04:58]Which uh we won't know until we get the next couple pieces made.

[00:05:04]Okay, we're cruising along here.

[00:05:06]Well, it's the style that I wanted. It's the look that I wanted. Now, earlier in this video I did mention that I was going to peak the center of the bumper to kind of match how the grill comes out. I decided to not do that. It just I made it out of cardboard and it just didn't really flow. Um this will have a small tube that comes up and around to the other side.

[00:05:30]So, what I might do is I mean, maybe. I don't know. I don't even know why say the ideas, but anyway.

[00:05:36]So, we did have to go in and cut that right there to get our clearance that we needed.

[00:05:44]But, it's looking pretty good. Flows nice. The turn signals, I'm going to do some research on finding some amber turn signals, rectangle ones, and then I'll cut those in later. I kind of want the factory style. Um worst case, I have done this on several other rigs before, is I cut a strip, welds on top of the bumper and goes all the way over, and then I'll put like four of the 3/4 in LED lights in there. They're okay. I mean, it works, but it's not like I like the look of like big rectangle ambers, like 70s style rigs, 50s, 60s, 70s, even into some of the 80s. Um to me, that just looks way better, but we'll get to that. So, the next thing we got to come up with is we got to hook around the corner right here.

[00:06:36]This is going to start heading uphill very fast.

[00:06:41]I only want to be about an inch or so, inch, inch and a quarter at the widest point, and then it just needs to follow this down to there.

[00:06:53]So, this will just kind of be one cap deal.

[00:06:56]And then, once we get those done, pretty much can fully weld the bumper out at that point.

[00:07:04]And then, we will put the trailer hitch in, and then weld it to the tow points, and we'll look at doing that piece of tube.

[00:07:12]Okay, I went ahead and got the bumper wrapped around both sides. So, now we're down to final welding the bumper shell, and then attaching to the tow points.

[00:07:20]And I'm going to save that for the next video. So, maybe I can show you guys a couple tips and tricks on welding and sanding sheet metal together to keep it strong and make it look really good. Possibly, you probably Maybe you already know.

[00:07:38]I'm digging it, though. I like it. We got to cap the bottom.

[00:07:42]All this will get capped right in here.

[00:07:45]I'm going to do a small 14-gauge sheet metal strip in here that has dimple dies. It'll match the piece that's on the rear bumper. And then like I mentioned earlier, we'll come up with something for turn signals. It is going to get a set of amber driving lights in the bumper somewhere as well.

[00:07:59]It's also going to get a small piece of tube on the front. But in the next video, I'll kind of give you guys a crash course on what we're doing with this rig, its purpose, um some of the parts we're going to be installing. We've already installed a bunch.

[00:08:15]We've already swapped the motor, done a full stainless steel header system from BJ's Off-Road, full stainless steel exhaust system from BJ's Off-Road. We've installed a new hood latch system, new cable, new billet latch from BJ's Off-Road. Uh just been going through from one end to the other. Been working on the wiring, getting some of the lights to work.

[00:08:34]We've actually got the dome lights and stuff to come on with the doors from the rear. But these things are notorious for wiring issues.

[00:08:40]Luckily, our friends at uh BJ's Off-Road, they offer pretty much everything to restore one of these.

[00:08:46]So, we're going to be getting a lot of parts from him, installing them, and we'll be able to do a handful of videos of all those upgrades.

[00:08:56]And then ultimately, our plan with this is haul our boat.

[00:08:59]We have a rooftop tent or rooftop tent for it that was given to us.

[00:09:03]And we want to be able to hook up to the boat, take off to a lake, take off to anywhere local boat launch that we normally fish already.

[00:09:11]Our whole family can ride in it. I can take customers out in it. I can have friends come.

[00:09:16]It's nice when those, you know, it's got air conditioning on the hot days you're coming home. And when it's super cold out on the winter days, it's got a great, you know, heater system in it.

[00:09:25]So, ultimately, it's going to be an adventure vehicle. We're going to take it up in the mountains. We'll take it up hunting. We'll take it um on trips over the mountain passes.

[00:09:35]I mean, it it was the the SUV the '80s, right?

[00:09:39]These were the coolest rigs in the '80s, and to me they are still very cool.

[00:09:43]We've actually made a business around another friend of mine's business building parts and accessories for these rigs.

[00:09:51]So, anyhoo, we're definitely not professionals. We know enough to do it wrong. If you're into Wagoneer stuff, uh look for videos to pop up here one or two a month, and uh until this thing is ready to hit the road. Appreciate it.