building bumper, have shackle mount questions

OK, I'm working on my rear bumper right now and I am at a point where I am trying to figure out how to mount my rear shackle. I will have the upper L part from an angle iron coming out from within the frame rail and it will be 5/16". Will it be find or should I reinforce it with another piece??

Btw the actual stability side to side is not an issue as the bumper itself will be very throughly braced and reinforced and all I have a concern with is if the 5/16" is thick/strong enough to be used for drilling a hole to mount a shackle directly to it.

Shackle mounts that I have seen mounted on bumpers are mounted from the back of the bumper, usually a slot cut in the back and in the front face with a plasma cutter or 4 holes drilled and then connect the dots with a cutoff wheel. The shackle material is then welded on both the front face and the rear face. The bumper itsels is then mounted to the frame rails just like a hitch with two straps using ALL the holes in the bottom of the frame rail just like the skid plate does plus the 8 normal mount points that stock bumpers use. I have also seen the same as above only the shackle mount is welded to a bigger plate and the plate is welded to the back face of the bumper. If you want I can shoot a couple of pics of the warn front bumper that we have on the TJ's and you can see how they did them....

This picture shows best what I"m talking about.
http://home.socal.rr.com/remi/pics/mounts.JPG

THe horizontal piece is a tow hitch horizontal piece that I cut out from it. The angle iron that holds it is kind of like the angle iron that held the hitch, just reversed up down and the position of the horizontal piece is adjusted by moving the holes.

What I'm thinking about doing is extending the bracket that holds it and drilling a hole for the shackle....

You also have to keep in mind that shackle HAS to be tapered, back to front, bigger in back and smaller in front so that if the weld breaks it does not become a missile in the same way that most clubs do not allow welded on tow hooks.
While the cut up receiver hitch will work you don't need to complicate things. A good 1" or 2"x 5/8" strap bolted to the frame rails and bolted to the bottom of the bumper with grade 5 bolts will hold fine, the grade 5's have a better shear angle. I take it you will be using rec tube 2x6 or something for the bumper itself. ? The bottom straps are to give you a good attachment to the frame rails for pulling.

RichP said:

You also have to keep in mind that shackle HAS to be tapered, back to front, bigger in back and smaller in front so that if the weld breaks it does not become a missile in the same way that most clubs do not allow welded on tow hooks.

Click to expand...

OK... this is not an issue because the shackle mount would be part of the same angle iron that is used for the hitch mount: I just cut out a 2.5" rectangular hole where I will be welding the hitch in so if it breaks and flies that means that for one 2.5" worth of weld on each side broke, about .5"~.75" of 5/16" steel sheared up top and close to 1" of steel sheared on the bottom..... Oh and it's not really complicating things cause the bracket is already made and all I need to do is drill a hole and give it some sort of a shape

Anyways, to get back to the topic is 5/16" enough for the shackle/d-ring mount? It should be short enough that there should be no issue of it bending or anything like that, but is there anything else that I'm forgetting?

Also that pic is not representing the whole bumper it's just showing how the main piece that has the receiver in it ties into it and how the shackle/d-ring mount ties into that.

I definitely wouldn't trust 5/16" for a shackle mount. Not sure how you plan on using this shackle mount with the main construction of the bumper itself though. What I do on most rear bumpers is take a piece of 3/4"x2" steel and use that for a shackle. Make it long enough to go through the entire structure of the bumper plus a minumum of 1" on the backside. They are always placed so that it is sitting directly against the framerail mounts on the backside, so in the end it's welded right to the mount, the back and front face of the bumper. Never pull that sucker off.

So what you could do (depending on your idea for the face) is make sure the actual shackle material you use will fall into place right next to that angle and weld it directly to it plus the face of your bumper. But that's just guessing since I don't know what you plan on using for the front. If you don't have the thicker material on hand, shoot me a message I'll send you whatever you need, even drill it for ya.

Now thats a good offer

AJsArmor said:

If you don't have the thicker material on hand, shoot me a message I'll send you whatever you need, even drill it for ya.

Click to expand...

Wow!! Cool Tahnks for the offer, but I got the piece I originally wanted to use, just didn't fell like drilling the sucker.

In any case I will post some pics after I get done with it over the next month

Good luck with it, don't hesitate to shoot me a message if you need a 2nd set of eyeballs.