Rear Bumper Blues?

I've found the cure for the common Rear Bumper Blues.

I've been wanting to add a Hitch to the Cat since we brought it home back in the winter. My goal was to haul my Dirt Bike without constant worry. (220lbs.) I found very few options for buying a ready made hitch and those all had the same faults. I would lose precious ground clearence (backing up my driveway clears by 2 inches) and figured I would get some bounce due to the long span of small tubing between the frame rails of the Cat.

I decided to have a custom Hitch made and just so happens I have a friend who is a professional certified welder. Within 10 minutes of looking at my Cat and explaining what I wanted he recommended replacing the rear bumper with 1/4" thick wall 4" tubing. Weld the existing frame rails solid, where they are now only spot welded, and add gussetts between box frame and I beam frame. He also suggested installing the receiver right through the middle of the tubing to save all ground clearence. I said "Excellent ideas and when can you start!?"

He made up the bumper at his shop and came by Saturday to install it.

Getting everything aligned. Notice the capped ends.


Ready to start welding. Notice the receiver through the center of the tubing.


Welding



Drilled and tapped holes to mount back-up lights. No self tapping screws will work here!


Sanded and ready to paint.


First coat of paint.


All finished with lights mounted.


I'm really pleased with the outcome and will never worry about hauling bicycles or my dirt bike on the rear of the Cat. This bumper will not bounce and will not rip! I still have all my original ground clearence as well.

The new bumper weighs 90lbs. The old bumper weighed 30 lbs. I removed spare tire and holding rack from rear and mounted it up front under the camper between the landing gear to offset any weight differences. If anything, I gained a few pounds of pin weight. I'll post pics in another thread detailing the spare tire mod.

Nice job and looks great. I'm sure you will be getting alot of "Where did you get that done?" when you are on the road.

That looks very professional.

Dang Dude, I gotta have one. I'm glad you've got a friend with a brain trained for fabbing stuff like that. could you get a sketch of that and the extra welding he did on the frame ? I can get someone here to copy it. I've seen recievers like that before that were fab'd up like that set in the tube but it was a curved tube on a rock crawler. One end of it served as a air tank. Other end held the hose.

So where do you put your Crapper hose ?

Perfect timing. I have a welder coming tomorrow to take measurements to put a hitch on my trailer. I am now going to show him your pictures and say "do that". The only addition I may do is make it two or three receivers instead of one. Is it possible to show how he reinforced the original square tube bumper supports? Everything else is easy to see. Thank you very much for sharing.

Wow really good job there, I also agree with maxum1989, we need to see how the reinforcing was done, so that I can fabricate a bumper to take my bike rack. Also some pics of the new spare wheel mounting would also be good. I will try to have this design on my Cat, but alas you will never see it unless you visit the U.K

Thats pretty much the exact same thing I did. It's probably overkill but we'll never have to worry about the bumper failing!
Like me, you can't put the stinky slinky in there anymore. Where will you be storing it?

Nice!!! Now send that to the engineers at forrest river and tell them............THIS IS WHAT MOST OF US NEED!

On our Keystone Challenger there is no 4" bumper for the sewer hose so I use a Air Tight plastic tub with a plastic bag for a liner. Jim

Nice work MountainMan!! Next year when I do my hitch upgrade, I'll use your example as a template for my local hitch shop to go by.

TC

Thanks fellas! I'm well pleased with it.

I'll try to explain a little better of how we re-enforced the existing box frame sections. We have two main I beams for our main frame. We also have two 16"-17" pieces of box frame spot welded to the outside of each I beam frame member. These 16" - 17" sections of box frame are what our bumpers are then welded to.

On my Cat these short boxed frame sections were only spot welded to the I beams in a few places. (One of them much better than the other from the factory). We simply added much more weld from the box frame connecting to the I beam frame. He then added gussetts (the small 1/4" thick steel triangles you see laying on my bumper in pic #2 above) to the top of each box frame section and welded these to I-Beam and box frame as well.

I tried to get a clear pic but didn't have much luck in the tight and dark space. The flash kept reflecting too much light off the black and it was too dark without it.

Here is the gussett on top of the box frame welded to the side of the I-Beam frame. Notice the added weld running along the top of the Box frame on each side of the gussett as well.


This one is hard to see but the box frame is on the left and the I-beam frame to the right of the pic. Notice the weld running up the entire end of the box frame in the middle of the pic. This was only spot welded in two places from the factory.


Another pic of the added gussett.


Here is the rear of the bumper to show how he installed the reciever through the bumper. Only about a 1/4" through the rear of the bumper to get solid welds.


Hope that helps explain a littler better.

I'll start another thread with the spare tire mod with pics.

Oh, I almost forgot...

I'm ordering this to hold the "stinky slinky". Much better than rusting out the rear bumper.
I'll be mounting it up near the valves and drain outlet to the frame of the Cat.

http://www.campingworld.com/shopping/product/e-z-hose-carrier/1483

Is your friend taking orders. Looks great, going to take your pictures to the welding shop tomorrow. Thanks a million, my DW has been wanting to put a bike rack on the back, check off a honey do item

............................................................Very nice............................................................

Man that looks nice....I'm with Bill

LOOKS GREAT!!! THANKS FOR SHARING WITH US!!!

Mountainman,

I have a question for you. How far do your bumper extensions go onto the I beam frame on your trailer? My welder is building my new bumper right now and I want to make sure my bumper extentions are not shorter than yours. I am considering reinforcing mine a little more than the gussets you put on your bumper extentions.

Thank you

Around 9" overlap maxum. As shown above, we also welded the box frame extensions solid to the I-beam and added the gussets. Make sure and look at yours close. One of mine was barely welded at all from the factory!

When my welder says "its there for the duration". He means it.

Looks great and great idea. Center mounted hitch is brilliant!!

Any idea how heavy of a dirt bike you can carry with that setup ?

LOOKS GREAT !!

I just had my family's company fab me a new bumper this week. I will post some pics. Made it out of aluminum.

ETA: Here are the pictures I snapped at lunch. It is made from 4" AL square tubing with 3/4" flatbar attaching it to the trailer with 4 , 1/2" bolts per side. The stainless pin with cotter key holds the end cap on so the hose can't fall out. I may weld a rack on in the future.

Looks nice!

That aluminum bumper looks great, saves weight as well. I am not trying to put a downer on the great job that's been done, but you do realise that the two metals react with each other, unless they are well coated with paint or isolated from each other.

Sean