Hey man, I appreciate your go-after it attitude! I think that's freaking awesome. Looks like you're making some solid progress. She should be on there in no time now. Gonna be beastly, haha.

Thanks man, it’s coming along!

Had to leave it here for the week and drive back to my house. It’s about 1/4 welded. Leaving the most important/visible welds for last. Will return next weekend to (hopefully) finish and paint!

Also, the ground clamp for my welder is starting to come apart from the wire, so i’ll be replacing that before I resume.

Keep it up! Remember, "a grinder and paint makes you the welder you ain't"

Solid brotha!!

MOVE got back to me today and they're going to send me different frame mount brackets. As proud as I am of my makeshift brackets, I think I will cut them off and use the proper ones. There will be fewer pieces and therefore less of my "hey that doesn't look too bad" welds between the frame and the bumper.

The brackets fit this time. I just cut room for them around my end cap plates and i’m just gonna consider my old end pieces “additional armor” lol

Cut off one side of the bumper-side brackets.

It’s getting dark so I’ll be a good neighbor and call it a night with the angle grinder.

I can already tell it’s gonna be an extreme PITA to allign the bumper onto the brackets and tack them together now that the whole bumper is assembled and weighs triple what it did last time i put the brackets on with just the middle piece... It’s just me and my injured mom who might be able to tack it while I hold it up, but that’s with me holding 130lbs at an awkward angle...

Jack stands are your friend.

since I’m replacing my ground clamp i noticed it’s meant to be used with thicker gauge wire so i dug around and found 8ft of welding wire that’s about twice as thick. I had it leftover from redoing the battery wires on my old bronco. Gonna just replace the whole wire. Bonus: It’ll be twice as long as the old one!

Good job powering through! I kinda side eyed the bumper design the first time I saw it, but it's growing on me. Now rather than making your dear mom run the welding rig, I'd think about building a support jig from scrap wood that you can use to hold the bumper in place with a floor jack and jack-stand it. Another set of hands or two would be ideal, but it looks like you'll figure something out!

I did, with jack stands and books, I somehow made it work, didn’t even need help, although if I had an extra set of hands it would’ve been done 5x as fast lol.

Not much visible progress today other than switching to the new mounts and a few more big welds. I had to destroy the old mounts in the process of getting them off, so it took a while.

Edit: Oh, and I kinda wish the new brackets had more room to move forward another half inch, so if I bump into something the bumper won’t immediately ram up against my body pieces, but I guess that’s how it has to be. It does result in a less bulky look though since it’s pushed up closer to the body, i guess. I had to grid down the bumper in some spots so that it wouldn’t rub against things, like whatever that cylindrical thing is in front of the radiator on the passenger side.

Edit 2: I’m also thinking of putting a recessed plate behind the “MOVE” logo, about an inch back, enclosing it, and using the two little included lights (meant for turn signals) to illuminate the recessed plate from below so the logo just slightly glows orange, like a jack-o-lantern. I think it’d be a cool look...

Done and painted. can’t wait to get it on the truck.

Just gotta wire up the lights now woop woop

Lookin lots better! How much space between the bumper and tire? Looks to be very close, might come back to bite you when you get new tires or flex your suspension