Well thanks man I appreciate that, I love welding it changes the whole approach to fabrication, it took me 15 days at a casual pace to get this far I can just imagine how much time I could save without all that drilling ! I'll probably get a welder one day.
A short piece of pipe welded to the bottom of this 1/2" plate and sized so that the ID fits snugly (slip fit) over the OD of the hub would add a ton of strength and stability to the crane. Love the repurposing of parts and materials! Makes me wanna build a crane for my hauler!
Excellent idea ! the plate is only about a 32nd of an inch from the tin cap so I'll probably slip a shim in there and see if it still moves with a load on, but that's too good an idea to not use !
Not yet, the bumper is still at the welders he's pretty swamped with work. I'll need the bumper installed to get some final measurements for the crane then cleanup and paint, then pics, maybe a video of it working. thanks for your interest
The bumper is back from the welders, cost me $ 80.00 it looks pretty good, except for the galvanized parts which are always a chore for a welder. With all the welding done the bumper comes in at 42 pounds, 10 less than the OEM Toyota bumper. instead of welding caps on the ends of the bumper I chose to use removable ½" x 2¾ " nylon plastic plugs, I cut them close to size then used a plane to make them fit snug, I'll drill a few 15/64 holes in the bumper, set the plugs in place then drill them to 3/16 for the screws.
Bumper looks great I'm kinda impressed/shocked it came in under OEM bumper weight. Can't wait to see the crane in action.
10 pounds less surprised me too!! ~smokey~ this is an awesome build! 3 edits and I can't get your name correct...My keyboard does not have a "Tilde" key (Or I can just fix it for you-EVW)
Keyboard or phone? On wife's laptop it's the upper case key just below the esc key It's on all keyboards.. Edit.. put a pic of your keyboard.. we'll find it On phone.. May have to switch "screens"