John Canfield
Site Team
We're on 35s so the door rocker panel is a bit high off the ground and DW has had just a bit of trouble getting a leg up into Rubi once in a while. While in Moab with the FMCA 4-Wheelers, we ran Poison Spider with trail leader Bob, I noticed his Dear Wife's step assist, and asked Bob about it. He made it when his wife was having some kind of physical problem and they just kept it on-board since it was so handy and easily stowed.
This looked like a fun fab project so I got busy. I didn't have any flat bar that narrow so I used 2" x 3/16" bar and as an improvement on Bob's step, I used round solid bar and not tube for the step.
I used the acetylene torch to heat up the bend marks to almost white hot and very easily hand bent the bar into position using a coat hangar previously bent into position as a bend template. Surprisingly I got the bend mark wrong where the step contacts the round tube of the rock slider - the bend is outside of the tube. Oh well, this would be considered a prototype in any product development. Even though that bend is a little outboard of where I would like, it is 100% functional
.
If I made another one of these steps, it would be from 1"x 3/16" flat bar - that would save some weight.
This looked like a fun fab project so I got busy. I didn't have any flat bar that narrow so I used 2" x 3/16" bar and as an improvement on Bob's step, I used round solid bar and not tube for the step.
I used the acetylene torch to heat up the bend marks to almost white hot and very easily hand bent the bar into position using a coat hangar previously bent into position as a bend template. Surprisingly I got the bend mark wrong where the step contacts the round tube of the rock slider - the bend is outside of the tube. Oh well, this would be considered a prototype in any product development. Even though that bend is a little outboard of where I would like, it is 100% functional
.If I made another one of these steps, it would be from 1"x 3/16" flat bar - that would save some weight.
