Part 1
Tools are a lot like clothes.
You’re probably asking yourself, WTF is Brian talking about? Do tools make the man? Well yes they do, but that’s not where I am going with this.
Hear me out.
The reason I say tools are a lot like clothes is simply just because you CAN wear something, doesn’t mean you SHOULD wear something.
I being of the short and stocky variety have no business in skinny hipster clothes. Sure I could wear them, but it would be extremely uncomfortable for all.
Same rule applies for tools. Just be cause you can use a butter knife to remove a screw doesn’t mean you should. See where I’m going now?
So far I’ve gotten by on this project using some questionable tools, but overall it has worked out. Until I got to the push-bars.
If you recall a couple of weeks ago I moved my front bumperettes inboard to not only give the bumper more of a ’74 appearance to it, but also to make room for the push-bars.
Almost universally I am asked whether or not I am going to build a speaker for the roof (No), nobody ever asks about the push-bars. To me the push-bars are a critical and essential to the Bluesmobile. They’re big, they’re ugly, they’re bent, they’re perfect.
When you see the front-end of the Monaco with the push-bars and the roar of a Chrysler big block, you tend to get out of the way quickly!
Now, as many of the people that build Bluesmobiles will tell you, this isn’t an off the shelf piece you can buy (Why would anything about working on a mid-70’s Dodge be easy?).
But thankfully those that have done this before I, did the research and came up with the dimensions and documented plans for the build.
The push-bars on the movie cars as far as anyone can tell were California Highway Patrol built to their own specs. In case you didn’t know, the movie Bluesmobiles came from California, not Mt. Prospect.
With a strong desire to do everything on this car myself I set out to gather the supplies. The steel was easy, I went to https://www.onlinemetals.com and ordered the the different pieces as called for in the plans. I had an online code so I got free shipping to boot!
I bough two 4 feet long 1/2x2in, two 4 feet long 1/2x1in, and a 36in 1in round rod.
These will be no sissy decorative pieces. This mofo will be a rammer!
Next up was time to get a welder. Now, I could have went out and had the bars welded up by a professional or by a number of friends and family that have offered (thank you all!), but like I said I wanted to do this by myself.
So I read up on welders and make a choice purely on the amount of money it cost. There is a saying that you get what you pay for, and boy did I learn that frugality does not pay in certain cases!
I chose a Campbell Hausfeld 115v Arc Welder (Stick).
This purchase was based purely from an economic standpoint. Never mind that stick welding is much harder to learn that MIG welding. Never mind that this little machine is woefully underpowered to weld 1/2 inch steel together. It’s cheap and should do the job!
Did I forget to tell you that I never welded before? In my life?
So after watching what seemed like a hundred YouTube videos I felt like I could do this!
I managed to fuse the front and bottoms together. Now, the plans themselves called for bending the flat stock at the 21 inch mark. Again, not wanting to outsource and not having a torch to bend, I cut and made a joint.
I’ll save you a lot of the boring details, but I wanted to show you I actually was able to build the push-bars with that little stick welder.
Unfortunately it was an illusion. I thing the dog got to close for a sniff and it all fell apart.
Back to the drawing board.
This is the point were someone much smarter than myself would throw the towel in and pay someone to do the job. But not me. I really want to do this, and I really want to learn how to make decent welds in order for future projects on the car and around the house.
I returned the stick welder and bought myself a nice home MIG welder.
Hobart is from the same company that makes Miller welders, and it is made in the U.S.A (from global parts).
Technically this machine will weld up to 1/4 steel with a single pass. Since it is a home 115v unit, it’s not really meant for anything more substantial. But, since I am learning and using flux core .035 wire that offers deeper penetration, I figured with multiple passes it should do the trick.
What is flux core wire? Well MIG welding requires a shielding gas that protects the weld from contamination as you make your pass. That requires separate gas tanks, lines, meters, etc.
Flux core has the shielding “gas” built into the wire itself. As you lay down a bead of weld, the flux is activated and protects the weld.
Now, why am I using flux core wire? Quite simply due to the learning curve and not wanting to mess with gas tanks, ratios, etc. Sure there is more clean up after each pass to remove slag leftover from the flux, but at this point it is not horrible to deal with. I’ll switch over to gas when I plan of doing projects that require a lot of welding.
The front and bottom bar went together nicely. You could tell the difference right away between my first attempt at welding and what I got out of this machine. It was like night and day.
The center bar is supposed to have a slight bend in the middle. Without a torch to heat it up and bend, I accomplished this by cutting some pie slices if you will into the bar.
I proceeded to strategically hit the bar with a sledge hammer to get the curvature I wanted.
After which I welded up the slits and ground it down to look flush. That was all I accomplished Saturday. I need a break!
The Mounts
There are four mounts that need to be made out of 1/2in x 1in steel to secure the push-bar to the bumper, upper and lower.
Here is another example of using the right tool for the right job.
To make the mounts I naively thought that I could use my rinky dink 5 amp keyless chuck Walmart special drill and stepped drill bits.
I learned very quickly that what I had on hand wasn’t going to cut it. (In reality I know this job called for a drill press, but I couldn’t justify the purchase.)
I went to my local big box home center and picked up a nice 8.5 volt DeWalt 1/2 drill with a keyed chuck and a 5/8in drill bit.
Yep, you heard that correctly. 5/8’s. Beefy bars require beefy bolts!
The end result was much better, but less than ideal.
Why was it less than ideal? Well, after the first two mounts were done, I had to stop frequently to sharpen the drill bits.
Second, is drill kick-back. If you have never experienced that, let me tell you to expect.
The drill is doing it’s job, humming along at a nice pace until it reaches a point where the bit no longer moves and gets caught up, usually at the end. There is a built up amount of torque inside the drill that has nowhere to go but to the other end. That’s right. The drill will be violently ripped from your hands and spin around in place until the torque dissipates.
At the very least you will have sore wrists after and hour of this. But you could walk away with worse injuries, broke fingers or torn tendons come to mine.
PRO-TIP: Also keep your face away from a drill while operating it. Your face does not appreciate being on the receiving end of drill kick-back. Just ask the genius blogger here.
After drill the holes in the mounts and being very happy I was done, I turned around and realized that I needed to drill the holes in the bumper. Fuck.
That was a lot easier though. Now, the push-bar plans are designed with the assumption that you are building them for a correct year (1974) Bluesmobile. Seeing as mine is a ’76 and will be quite sometime before I even consider swapping bumpers, I had to modify the plans slightly to work with my bumper and garage space. To 99% of the population, no one would notice, but I want to help those that might not change their bumper either.
I had holes where the bumperettes were, so I didn’t want to drill two holes for the mounts and leave those exposed.
So I used those as the inner bolt holes.
I had to enlarge it slightly but it worked. Then I drilled the other hole and placed the mounts on the bumper temporarily in order to hold up the push-bars and get the mounting angle right.
You can see three lines drawn onto the mount in the picture above. The middle line is meant for the bar that attaches to mount. Since I moved the mounts themselves inward slightly, I am going to use the outside line to keep the width of 30 inches.
I lined them up, made sure it was level and tack welled the push-bar to the mount. I also marked the angle of the bottom mount that will attached to the underside of the bumper at this time.
After repeating the same steps on the other side I have a pretty decent idea of how they will look.
All that was left was to grab the center bar and check for fitment.
Wouldn’t you know it that I bent the bar too much the first time and had to beat it down again. I finally managed to break one of the welds and ended up with a weird curvature that I am going to fix.
The only other deviation from the plans was how far they stick out. The upper mounts were designed as being 8 inches front to back.
I would be able to park the car in the garage with that, so I made them 6 3/4 inches. Just enough to squeeze her in with a couple of inches of extra space.
PART 2
Well it turns out that Part 2 was very anti-climatic! While everything was lined up on the car, I tack welded the center bar in place.
Took the push-bar off the car to weld on the table and went to install it. The upper bumper attachments got out of wack somehow, either too much heat, or to much material, or both.
At this point I was pretty much fried and didn’t feel like messing around to much with these anymore. I cut off the mounts, held them in the bumper with the bolts, positioned the push-bar in place on jack stands and welded it back to the mounts.
At this point I didn’t care anymore how ugly the welds were, all I wanted was the push-bars to be installed and safe.
Through out the build I did very unscientific tests to gauge the structural integrity of the push-bars. I banged the living shit out of them with a sledgehammer.
If that wasn’t enough, there were times that I accidentally knocked them off the table and they went crashing to the ground, and they didn’t fall apart. Which is good.
Lastly, after securely mounting the bars to the front bumper, I stood on the bars with my overweight self and rocked the front-end of the car like I was Magilla Gorilla.
Will they withstand a front-end collision?
I SURE THE HELL HOPE NOT!
1/2 steel push-bars mounted to the front bumper of a 4000 lb car, of which is welded directly to the sub-frame with no shock-absorbers in between is the ultimate definition of a rammer. Or a shocker as the derby guys like to call it.
Here’s some pics of the finished product.
Overall I am happy that I was able to build them by myself. There are a number of woulda, coulda, shoulda things that come to mind, but the end result is what I wanted.
I believe I mentioned before that I shortened the length a tad in order for me to park in my garage.
Here’s why:
