Thread: Progress on My Unimog

This week I've been concentrating on the front bumper /bullbar. I started working on it, first bending up the top pipe. This is made from 60mm pipe with a 3mm wall thickness - it was very difficult to bend and by the time I had made it, I was stuffed. There are 6 bends in total, and I managed to get it symmetrical first time luckily, or would have had another hard workout. At this stage I decided that the Hella Rallye 4000 spotlight would make really good high beam lights. With that in mind, the front bumper would be about 25mm deeper than the originals, but that only needs to be deep around the lights, after that I could taper it up.

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The next part was to mount the 7.5 ton winch. The support plate for the winch sits on top of the chassis rails, that made the winch quite high. I made up the winch plate out of some 10mm plate. IT took quite a bit of cutting and fitting to get it right - my plasma cutter struggles a bit on 10mm steel, so I did most of the cutting with the 1mm cut off wheels on the angle grinder. I cut the support plates off the old bumper, and welded them onto the main plate - I was pretty happy with the weld - first time I have welded such thick plate together. I bevelled both sides of the plate, and was able to get good penetration right through.

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Whilst it fitted , and would be strong enough, If left it there until the next morning. In the morning I was still not happy with the winch taking up so much of the grill, and basically being exposed. So I took it all apart again.

After much deliberation I decided to cut off the front tow hitch ( that's the brown thing you can see sticking out from under the plate in the photo above). I could then lower the winch in between the chassis rails. That way I could hide the winch in the front bullbar, just like on the Defender and Discovery.

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I had run out of steel, so have to wait until next weekend to get the winch mount made up. I decided to make up the front bumper out of cardboard.

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And this is what it looked like. After much playing around I came up with a shape that looked good. The bumper continues past the front and provides extra protection to the front mudguards.

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This is how I left it on Sunday night - this an "artist's impression" of what it will look like thanks to a quick photoshop exercise.

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During the week, I will get the local sheet metal shop to fold up the bumpers out of 5mm plate. I took them over this morning and they said it should not be a problem, but they may have to make it in a few parts. All going well, I should be able to start fitting the bumpers and all the support plates and gussets next weekend.

Wow, that looks impressive.

I am guessing it will weigh a bit once complete and the winch is in place.

It will, but that's all in the "budgeted weight allowance". It will weigh about the same as the massive channel that was on previously. The winch is quite heavy, especially with the wire rope - comes in at around 48kg or so.

I have been thinking about winches & would like to see if it possible to mid mount one & run it fore or aft as required, it would be a bit more stuffing around using it but being able to recovery either direction would make it a bit more versatile. Did you explore this option early on before adding your rear body to see if it is doable.

I did look at it, but there is not that much room in the middle of a U1250 - the only area would be around top of the transmission, and that would require the camper box to come off to access the winch and quite a lot of bracketry as the chassis dip down a lot in that area. If you run with the spare tyre in the standard place - that won't work. I have another winch at the rear - 7.5ton same as in the front, that gives me both options, in theory I could have worked a way for the cable from the rear winch to exit through to the front - there is a clear passage through the OEM camper box sub-frame just for this purpose, but that would require a fair bit of work to go around the engine - but it is possible. I decided to live with the 55kg penalty ( I could save about 15kg just by using some Dyneema rope instead.

Originally Posted by Iain_B

I've only seen the few on the Benzworld forum, I don't think he has finished it yet.

The ambulance should be fast axles - if they have a OM366A then it is more likely, as the rev limit on the engine is much less. Ambulances normally only have a top speed of 90kph, some are 110kph with the "super fast axles", but you can change the tyres on a standard U1300 from 12.5R20 to 14.5R20, and fit a Claas overdrive to get to about 110kph.

I looked very seriously at building a pop up camper, but they are hard to get right, and if you get it wrong, they leak a lot. If you have a pop top, then you have to be careful about how you load the roof, mine will have 5 solar panels and a roof rack for taking a canoe or surfboards.

I'm not to worried about shipping as RoRo is available to all the destinations I want to go to, and there is less chance of damage - you have to make sure the truck is securely tied down in the container, or the will be some serious panel damage with the way the move the around at the docks

Have you seen this Unicat - it has quite a party trick.

Truly awesome!

Originally Posted by Iain_B

I did look at it, but there is not that much room in the middle of a U1250 - the only area would be around top of the transmission, and that would require the camper box to come off to access the winch and quite a lot of bracketry as the chassis dip down a lot in that area. If you run with the spare tyre in the standard place - that won't work. I have another winch at the rear - 7.5ton same as in the front, that gives me both options, in theory I could have worked a way for the cable from the rear winch to exit through to the front - there is a clear passage through the OEM camper box sub-frame just for this purpose, but that would require a fair bit of work to go around the engine - but it is possible. I decided to live with the 55kg penalty ( I could save about 15kg just by using some Dyneema rope instead.

Interesting mate, thanks for the info. I felt to do it properly you would need an access holes through the floor in the camper for the times you need to access the winch. As you say it is probably a lot of stuffing around to save a few kgs.