Baby Steps

This is the end of the frame that I have modified so that I can have the bumper bolted on instead of welded on. This silly little piece took me about 6 hours to make. And I had to make two of them. It probably would have taken me half an hour to make them both, but I seem to be in the habit of working on the Airstream for 10 or 15 minutes at a time. Between helping with the garden, running errands for the Missus, pulling splinters out of feet, lighting the grill, eating dinner, giving my daughter a bath, and myriad other things that come with being a father, husband, and slave. This is the (almost) finished piece. I still have to weld them to the frame, but it was after midnight at this point, and I was whipped.


OK - step one: Tack weld your steel plate to the frame. Find the center where the hole will be drilled. Well, this is step two. Step one is to rummage around in my pile of steel bits and pieces to find a couple chunks of metal that will work with the minimum amount of cutting, grinding, and sweating. These ones just needed a little trimming and they were perfect.

Next step: Drill a hole for your bolt to fit. Since this bolt will be holding a heavy bumper to a frame, it needed to be pretty big. Which means it would need a pretty big hole. Which means that, since the whole thing is too big to fit in my drill press, it would be a bitch to drill with a hand drill. Do this twice.
Step 3 (4?): Put your bolt in the hole, put the nut on it, and weld the nut to the plate. Make sure not to clean up the weld before taking pictures so that it looks like metalic seagull poop on camera rather than a good, solid weld.
And here's what you get. Clean, simple, and if I tweak my bumper pulling out of the driveway, I can easily remove it to repair the damage. Like Wally said, "Make no changes, only improvements".