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Old 04-27-2022, 09:50 AM   #21
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Just thinking about the rear tail lights being blocked by the spare tire mount.

For this amount of design effort perhaps looking at a second set of stop/turn lights in the bumper itself might be warranted. This would allow mounting the tire and box to where they could block the stock lights and provide for the ability to open the passenger side rear door without having to release both swing arms.

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Old 04-27-2022, 10:03 AM   #22
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Gregor Halenda has a pretty sweet design to mount a 37" spare without blocking the tail light, see his thread starting here:

https://expeditionportal.com/forum/t...2#post-2574600
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Old 04-27-2022, 06:57 PM   #23
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Quote:
Originally Posted by motovan_mn View Post
Gregor Halenda has a pretty sweet design to mount a 37" spare without blocking the tail light, see his thread starting here:

https://expeditionportal.com/forum/t...2#post-2574600
Don't show him that. He said he has never welded aluminum. Gregor's skills will demoralize any new welder to the point of tears.
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Old 04-28-2022, 09:33 AM   #24
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1der:
I think you bring up a good point! I was looking through the Baja Design website and came across their RTL LED Rear Light Bar set up which seems like a pretty cool idea. It is a single 30" light bar that has the ability to function as a brake light, running light, turn signals, and an area scene light. Though something like that would probably work best being mounted on the roof rack.

motovan_mn:
I actually had previously read through his build thread, he is super talented! I like how he added a hinge to the van body rather than tieing into the existing hinge pin, pretty sweet idea! Also, I love seeing how others work through design ideas. Obviously, I am pretty committed to the full 3D model approach but when I see good hand sketches like his I get a little envious of their approach.

86Scotty:
Oh, that is so true! His tig welding especially on his ladder looks amazing and his attention to detail combined with the ability to execute is impressive. Luckily for me, I have spent a fair amount of time looking at amazing fabricators' work to already know that I will never be what they are! If you want to see some impressive welding and fab work you should check out Morgan Clarke Design 1 (Specifically his Chasing Passion: The MCD1 Exotic Prerunner Build).
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Old 04-29-2022, 09:35 AM   #25
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I know the pics make it look as if they box & tire are sagging/leaning back. I assure you they are level.
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Old 04-29-2022, 06:13 PM   #26
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Since everyone here is thinking about bumpers and bikes.

What are everyone's thoughts on welding a hitch receiver right above the latch on the right UJOINT swing arm for a 1up rack. I was going to try and set up vertical 1up trays in place of the pelican box, but I watched a YouTube video of putting them on and it looked like a PITA. Should I bail for the Aluminess rear bumper and bike rack? I have a high roof, and am tall, but that also looks kind of treacherous around branches. I spend a lot of time biking, so I want to get this right.

Any chance a spare one of these homemade bumpers is being fabricated?

Would this be viable? Too much leverage? Will the latch work? I don't see why it would be much different than a hitch-mounted swing arm.
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Old 04-30-2022, 09:26 AM   #27
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Originally Posted by maxswasser View Post
Since everyone here is thinking about bumpers and bikes.

What are everyone's thoughts on welding a hitch receiver right above the latch on the right UJOINT swing arm for a 1up rack. I was going to try and set up vertical 1up trays in place of the pelican box, but I watched a YouTube video of putting them on and it looked like a PITA. Should I bail for the Aluminess rear bumper and bike rack? I have a high roof, and am tall, but that also looks kind of treacherous around branches. I spend a lot of time biking, so I want to get this right.
I strongly debated doing a vertical bike rack but decided against it for a few reasons. The lengths of my bikes would require me to shift them very high up over the roof to keep them from being at a point where they wouldn't be way lower than the bumper, for you that sounds like it wouldn't be much of a problem since you have a high roof. Then I realized when looking at the measurements of everything the distance it would stick out past the back of the van is about the same as a normal two bike rack. It seems the vertical configuration is best for three or more bikes since then you start seeing a reduction in length compared to a normal rack. Also, during my research on the vertical configuration, I came to the same conclusion that a 1UP rack in the vertical orientation would be a PITA to load and unload. Other options I looked at were Lolo Racks which sell a rack that is intended to mount to a van door, and I looked at Recon Racks that is now part of 1UP racks.


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Originally Posted by maxswasser View Post
Any chance a spare one of these homemade bumpers is being fabricated?
Most likely this will be a one-off deal. I think it is going to require too many modifications to make it reliable enough to build another and then just bolt up to another van.

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Originally Posted by maxswasser View Post
Would this be viable? Too much leverage? Will the latch work? I don't see why it would be much different than a hitch-mounted swing arm.
This is essentially my backup plan, but for the Aluminess bumper but only because I like the design a little more. I think there wouldn't be any problem with adding onto the swingarm as you said but the only downside I see is that the bike rack will then sit off-center from the van which may cause the bike wheels to hang outside the van body some.
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Old 05-08-2022, 07:20 PM   #28
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Update:
I spent some time working on making a cardboard mock-up of the bumper design that I modeled on the computer. Below are some pictures and a few things that I figured out when going to my loose cardboard mock up.

I had stated before that I was contemplating cutting the van body to accommodate the bumper wrap around but after some more investigating this doesn't really seem like a viable option anymore. The body panel connection at the two panels seems to be pretty vital in the strength of the exterior body panel. So the only way I see to cut this area out would be to then reweld and seal off this cavity higher up. This seems like not only a lot more work but also more risk than I would like to take on.

So that leaves the second option of wrapping the bumper around the existing bodywork, which surprisingly actually lined up pretty well with the initial design that I posted. Though like E-350 pointed out this will create a two-plane departure from the wheel well to the rear bumper face. Although this isn't ideal for sliding on, I think it would still work and hopefully, it's not going to be something that is tested frequently.

The second issue with this plan is that the body will move independently of the bumper, which may cause some issues when the van is crossed up. At the advisement of Ray (1der) I used some jack stand to try to cross the van up in the garage to see how much body flex to the bumper there was. Surprisingly there was not as much as I would think at the rear bumper, especially in comparison to the front bumper. So after that test, I decided that this design may still work, it just may require some modifications to allow for some gapping in some areas. I think this will also be mitigated some by adding in the hitch frame cross-member and the bumper wing to frame mounts.

During the process of mocking this up, I decided to make a few adjustments to the dimensions. Some of these were done just to get things fitting better to real-world constraints and others were changed because in the real world it just looked wrong to me. The biggest change was the distance that the rear bumper extended past the rear of the van. I pulled this dimension in a few inches from where my initial mock-up was, and it seemed to flow much better once this was done. The downside to this is that it may limit the space that I will have for the possibility of a top-mounted storage hatch like the Aluminess design. Realistically I think that the biggest reason it looked wrong to me was that there was no spare tire or storage box, so It started to make it seem like the bumper was sticking out really far. So this may change as I look at it more.

So now after all my rambling that most probably don't care about here are some pictures of my mock-up.

One thing to note is the brush guard mock-up is really rough and the forward most piece in the final design will be closer to the light edge. I was just stuck working with standard sweep dimensions. Also, it will be 1.5" not 1" like shown












(Side Note: If you followed along with my build thread you might notice that in these pictures the background to the van looks a little tidier than it did previously. The last few months I finally got around to building garage cabinets and pretty much completely finished out my garage. Now the only thing that looks messy at times is my workbench!)

And here are a few images of a more updated model that shows my current idea for the hinge system. This is pretty much a direct copy of how Aluminess does it, but instead of 2 hinge points I am thinking 4 so it can accommodate more weight. For latching systems, I am thinking of using something like a Southco Rotary latch with a cable-driven actuator (this would be the more complicated setup) or something like a Brute Force Fab Latching System.



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Old 05-09-2022, 03:49 AM   #29
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Looks good.
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Old 05-09-2022, 06:28 AM   #30
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Yeh, I like it too.
I would measure the depth of an alumnus bumper and utilize the extra space for in-bumper storage space …believe you already mentioned you may consider this anyway as you progress. I’d do it for two reasons: first, the tire and box are going to stick out past it anyway, and secondly with extra weight I would use support blocks (like Aluminess offers) for the outer edge of your bottom swing-arm frames >> something the frame can rest on to absorb some of the weight the swing arms carry (and the farther out they are the better).
I may be mistaken, but looks like your picture shows 4 fuel/water cans on the top of the box, but I believe you can only get three up there (unless you some how have managed to increase the width of the box).
I like you cardboard fab work!
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