So, like the sucker I am, I thought I would help an out of work neighbor by throwing him some business. He is a welder and made a post on our FB page about how he was out of work b/c of covid and that he would take any welding side jobs he could to help out with bills and Christmas.

I hadn't planned on doing a bumper upgrade anytime soon but I figured if I could help a neighbor out and the numbers were right, it might work out for both of us. I contacted banditrunner and had him draw up the plans. He got me just want I wanted for $125.

I have another neighbor who works at a metal fab company and he used the cad files to get me a quote for waterjetting the parts and with his discount it came out to a sweet $250 for the metal and the cuts.

Great, so that would put me at $375 into the project. I got a couple of quotes on powder coating for $200 from guys who have done stuff in the past for me, bringing the running total to $575. I've found lots of off-the-shelf bumpers in the $1000-$1200 range. It doesn't make sense for me to overpay to get the project done now since it means delaying other things that I wanted to do first so I showed him the steps it would take to weld the bumper (banditrunner gives a nice, detailed walkthrough on everything, so there is no guesswork involved) and offered him $600 cash for the welding.

Well, he said he couldn't do it for that price, so I guess he wasn't in as dire straights as he made it out to be. Since I hadn't bought the metal yet, I'm only $125 into the project and figured I would table it for now until the time comes that I could do the welding myself, but I was curious how much labor is reasonable for welding together clean, water-jetted plates. I've asked other people and gotten quotes from 8-10 hrs. Does that seem right?

I welded around 7’ to weld my sleeve on my frame and it used a little over 1lbs or mig wire and an entire small bottle of gas. And it took 40 min to do the welding.


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The guy that welded my sliders quoted me $450 to weld a bumper. $600 seems like it should be in the ballpark.

For any more than that you might as well buy your own welding gear and do it yourself

I got my rear bumper welded up and powder coating for 575. Not sure how much of that cost was for the welding. I'd assume 350-400 of it.

Randy brings up a good point. Welding is a good skill to know and this might be a good opportunity to learn.

Never a sucker when doing a good deed, not being suckered has it's rewards..

$600+ sounds steep a lot goes into making one square, fit body lines, finish welds not much grinding or filler, straight welds of peices etc. what were you getting with this welder/quote part of not suckered.

I can weld (my brother might disagree with that statement, but I digress), I just don't have the time to do it right now. I have a board exam in May, so any work I do on the truck is limited to <30 of personal time per day. I have pretty much every minute between now and may mapped out, so I may just wait until then to do it.