Thanks to SMURF for giving me the bar off his old Surf to use as raw material. The top bar and droppers were a great starting point, much appreciated Keith. A huge thank you to Kevin and 'Tash for coming up with all the detail and ideas, then doing all the work. All I had to do was watch, learn, take photos and play with the grinder.
We (they) removed the existing tissue-paper bumper and drifted a close-fitting length of round bar the full length of the front cross-tube.
Then used 100/80 heavy angle for upper support mounts, using the existing mounting holes in the chassis rail front-ends.
Trimmed the angle to fit and positioned the bar, then welded the angle in place.
Obtained two tiny little nuts/bolts and welded the nuts into the ends of the round-bar cross-tube.
Mounted brackets to bolt lower bar section to cross-tube, bolted in place and welded to bumper. (Excuse the hacked box-section bracket, but the lower section was all we had available, and was too short for the ideal set-up. If you made one from scratch, you'd have it the right length and only have to use a piece of flat bar for a bracket.)
Finished welding and cleaned up the bar, before bolting in place. Note that the tow-hooks are almost directly in line with the lower cross-tube. This transfers tow/snatch forces mainly to the strong tube, placing almost no shear stress on the piss-ant factory mounting holes. We did, however, replace the upper bolts with slightly longer high-tensile ones anyway.
The finished product!
[/img][/i]
Hope to finish this and have it painted by this weekend. Will post up when all done. :thumright:
. Will get pics posted up for you then while I have it off.