A-Bar Fitting (Near Disaster)

My first job of many was to fit an A-bar.

10 minute job you'd think ............. until discovering the chassis/bumper joint was missing the captive nut block and the bumper was only held on my loose bolts, great !

Bit of bodging with the welder and some nuts and it will all be sorted. 4 hours later and I finally got there. In hindsight I should have just ordered this part and waited : Defender Bumper Captive Nut Plate

I think my list of jobs is going to teach me that nothing is a 5 minute job when it comes to an old defender !

A small triumph. Next job, the rock sliders.

I've got one sat in my garage waiting to fit, better leave a bit more time than I'd planned to fit it then. Lol

If the bumper had been attached properly in the first place it would have been 20 mins max. Damn previous owner !

Which make of A bar did you get? Looks just like my Rebel one I got from the folks for Christmas. Can't wait to get it fitted.

It was an ebay jobbie, labelled up as realsteel4x4.

It's either a rebadged rebel, or a very good copy.

I had a similar problem early on, i wanted to take off th ebumper to measure up for making a winch bumper, but the bolts were rusted into the captive nuts and just sheared. I got the bumper off ok, but it was difficult getting the snapped off captive nut/bolt pieces out of the chassis. Had to plasma cut bits off until it was small enough to get through the gap.

I don't have rock sliders, but did at one point replace the tubular outriggers. The old ones had rusted up and bubbled up inside, it took bloody ages to file the inner diameter back down. Hopefully you won't have that trouble fitting your outriggers. But yes, nothing has been a five minute job on mine, so I have the policy of replacing every bolt that comes off it for a new one.

I also fitted an A bar from real steel 4x4 last month to a 110 puma, Very well made took around 30 mins to fit.