Good work Jeff,

I just finished reading "High and Mighty", a
reasonably well-written anti-SUV book, and one of the
many points made about SUVs were the height and
stiffness of their frames/bumpers.  Fortunately, for
those of us with non-lifted vans, our bumpers are at a
good level, so height is not a concern.  The stiffness
thing becomes one, though, and on two levels.
1) You can unduly destroy the end of another car with
bumpers too strong (one of my main concern with the
uber-meaty volkscafe bumpers).  Bumpers should absorb
some impact.  The fact that ours only cost about $100
to replace is actually pretty nice.
2) You can hurt yourself with a bumper/chassis setup
that is too stiff.  An uber-bumper only exacerbates
tendencies towards whiplash and other assorted
injuries.

I do agree that vanagon rear bumpers are too flimsy,
but overdoing it can pose their own set of dangers, if
not to you, then to the other person.  Not knowing
what your wall thickness was, it seems that your
design is a good middle ground of not too flimsy (vw)
and not too scary (volkscafe).

Simply connecting that open forward edge of the stock
bumper back up would go a long way to improving it's
stiffness.  I want to rivet some thin C-channels the
full length of the rear bumper to keep it in line on
those 2mph bumps.

Sorry for going on so long,
-Damon

--- Jeff K <kennedy@THERIVER.COM> wrote:
> As a matter of fact, the bumper on mine was
> similarly tweaked - backing into
> a pole didn't help it any. So, I made a new rear
> bumper, and a bull bar in
> the front. Grand total was about $40 in steel, $8 in
> paint, and about 12
> hours labor (learning as I went). I was going to
> make a front bumper to
> match the rear, but it was getting to be too heavy.
> But, the bull bar will
> make a nice place to mount a couple of Hella
> 500's...
>
> I pity da fool that rearends me...
>
> http://personal.riverusers.com/~kennedy/bumper1.jpg
> http://personal.riverusers.com/~kennedy/bumper2.jpg
> http://personal.riverusers.com/~kennedy/bumper3.jpg
> http://personal.riverusers.com/~kennedy/bumper4.jpg
>
> cheers,
>  Jeff

=====
'84 Westy (Sparky) w/2.3L WBX (woo hoo! my first engine build works!)

__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com