Hey guys for a long time I've been wanting to try fabricating so that I can truly build everything on my jeep any advice on how to build lower control arms and bumpers and various other buildable parts
I would start with fabbing the bumpers first, especially if you have little experience with this type of work. If youre looking for ideas for your bumper you can check google images out for jeep bumpers. Once you find a style that suits you, get some cardboard and start cutting! Cut out the pieces the way you think they would look good and once you have a finished model, go get your self the steel that you need. This will save you a ton of money and headache since you can get an infinite amount of cardboard practice on that. There are some mounting tabs that you will want to upgrade for the front bumper if thats where you start. There are models on this website that you can search for to get measurements.
As for the control arms, I would say that youre better off purchasing those from a lift company. Trying to fab those is something best left to the professionals since there are many factors taken into consideration when creating them. They are engineered to be the shape and length that they are for a reason, not only that, but if your welds were to fail while you are driving on public highways, you put yourself and other people at risk of serious injury or death. Don't get me wrong, I would love to say that I have completely built my entire jeep, but there are some things that you should let others take care of.
After that, you could build yourself a roof rack, bumper mounted tire carrier, rock sliders, roll cage, fender flares, winch mount (essentially part of the front bumper), skid plates, and light mounts.
The most important thing when welding is fusion. If you have a stick welder, then you're pretty well set cause your either going to be welding, sticking the stick or burning through. MIG can be pretty tricky cause you can easily get cold lap if you don't have it set right, or try to weld metal that is too thick. Another thing to watch out for when welding is porosity in your welds. It will basically look like cancer and if you have welds that look like that, the work will probably need to be redone if you don't want it to break.
Sorry if you know all this already, but you did ask for tips for fabrication of your own items. In no way am I trying to insult your intelligence, Id rather be safe than sorry if you haven't done this type of work before.
Fabrication is easy. It's the design part that sucks. I had over 100 hours into designing, researching, and figuring out just my front bumper. Took about 30 hours to fab, paint, and install.
Control arms are really simple actually. Use DOM, roughly around 1.75-2" OD, with a thick wall. Then pick your joints, get the proper tube adapters and burn it all together. Do you know what kind of joints you are going to run? That will help narrow down your materials.
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