52 M37 – Now With Winch

[just me]

That's about right. The brake drag, bearing preload and bushing drag makes it tight when it is all to spec.

[sturmtyger380]

Well the drivers side winch bumper - I got most of the dents out and the flanges straight, but it still had quite a tweak to it. If I lay it on the floor it rocks side to side. I don’t have a way to take that tweak out. I still had the original non winch bumper. Its passenger side was not tweaked but just had the flanges bent. The driver’s side was really bad. So, I decided to cut the passenger side off and flip it and make a driver’s side winch bumper.



I didn’t have a good way to replicate the curve in the bumper near the winch opening. So, I cut the one off the tweaked bumper to weld it onto the new bumper.



Here is the weld. Rick will be happier, (Maybe). I figured out my wire speed was too low when I realized the wire speed controls the voltage going to the tip. Duh!



With the weld ground down it looks like it belongs there.



Now to fix the hole and fill in the two bolt holes as they are not in the right place once you flip the bumper.



Hole fixed and filled in.



I had to mockup the bumper to figure out where the holes needed to go.



Here is the finished bumper, (After this shot, I realized I had to add weld nuts to the two holes closest to the camera.)



Now to work on the passenger winch bumper.

[808morgan]

Lucky you, I have a truck with a winch bumper, but no winch, the broken ones are even expensive. I may put a classic looking modern one on and then cover it with a canvas winch cover to keep it from looking out of place.