My new bumper mount broke on the trail near Moab last weekend

I picked up one of those cheap steel weld-on bumpers from a local fab shop in Grand Junction. The whole driver side mounting tab snapped clean off when I hit a drop on Poison Spider Mesa. I ended up strapping the bumper to my frame with a ratchet strap and limped it back to camp. Anyone else had weld failure on budget bumpers or did I just get a bad one?

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2 Comments

claire_butler12mo ago

Damn that sucks, sorry to hear about the bumper. Had a similar thing happen with a buddy's cheap weld-on front bumper from a small shop in Colorado, the whole bracket cracked right at the weld joint after a hard hit. Did you get a look at the weld itself before it snapped - was it all bubbled up and splattery looking or smooth? I'm just wondering if it was a cold weld or maybe they didn't prep the steel right before burning it on.

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jessec392mo ago

Man, you know I used to think welds were pretty much all the same as long as they held... but this whole thing really changed my mind. That description about bubbled up and splattery is exactly what I saw on mine now that I think back on it. It looked like someone just dropped a bunch of hot glue on there instead of actually fusing the metal together. I never really paid attention to weld quality before, but now I'm gonna be checking every single bead on anything I buy.

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