The BMW shop I work at has a second location for race car fabrication and the fabricator is willing to make some custom tube bumpers if enough people are interested. The only issues are I need 3 people to be serious about wanting one before the design work starts and I'm in Northern California. The bumper will be a bare bones tube bumper with only light mounts and recovery points. It will be similar to the RockStar bumper but the front top bar won't be as tall or may be completely eliminated and I'm considering putting mounts on the bottom of the main tube for fog lamps. So if you have been wanting a tube bumper but don't want to pay shipping from the midwest or east coast let me know.

 

I would be interested. I'd like to see a sketch or photo of similar type before I commit. I'm in Placerville, be happy to discuss over a beverage.

 

x2 on needing the photo first.

 

If it is a true fab shop they should be able to do a 3D image of the bumper before you start bending the first tube. If I were you I would come up with a few different designs and then see which one most people like and then build that one.

 

Come on down the hill, I work in Rancho.

The bumper will be similar to the rock star one but I'm considering dropping the upper bars because they don't really do anything. It is what some people call a prerunner bar which basically eliminates the stock bumper for more ground clearance and provides a place to mount lights and have a recovery point. I will be trying to maintain the stock crash cans but until we start mocking up stuff I won't know for sure.

The fab shop normally just does roll cages and chassis reinforcement, they don't have thousands of dollars of CAD equipment so I have no way of 3D modeling this. The fabricator doing the work used to build cages and tube chassis' for TRG and a couple other ALMS teams.

 

so.. like this?

 

I like the general idea but I would hope the tube would be closer in diameter to the roof bars on an '04 DII. The smaller diameter tube doesn't seem to do much IMO.

 

Sort of, the main tube will be a larger diameter and there will be mounting tabs for a front skid plate and at least one recovery point.

 

I don't know if I would make them the same size as the 04 roof bars because the weight and cost will go up making that large.