GL push bar welded or bolted on?

[RoscoePColtrain]

Morning guys,

What would you recommend for the installation of a push bar on a GL, welded in or bolted on?

[Ghoste]

Bolt on will make resale easier won't it? (not a GL slam btw, just asking in case a prospective buyer wants to change it back)

[THE COLONEL]

BOLT BOLT BOLT!!!  You don't want to weld something like that on.  What bar do you have?  Obviously I have the large push bar on The Colonel, and it is all bolted on.  I could have it off in five minutes if I wanted to.  If you have the large bar, the arms of the bar that extend under the car, will line up perfectly with existing holes on each side of the frame of the car.  What you need to do is, drill through the other side of the frame, and then through the push bar.  Add a bolt and lock nut, and your good to go. 

Now, a little extra thing I did, was contact the Smith Brothers, who make plates that weld to the bottom bar of the push bar.  After this plate is welded to the bottom bar, the holes in the plate that you buy, will line up perferctly with the holes in the licence plate braket on your car,  that will allow you to bolt that plate into the holes from the licence plate bracket.  That will make it really strong.  I could have a 600lb person sit on that thing, and it will not give.  I would suggest doing that, and if you do, do it first so you get the plate welded in the right spot. 

Take your time in ligning it up, as with the plate, and the holes under the car, will need to be almost exact, so make sure the plate is welded in the correct spot, or will have to get another one.

These pics were from last year sometime, but it gives you an idea on how what to do, and how to do it!

[RoscoePColtrain]

The car will eventually have the larger push bar installed.

[skip68]

I agree, BOLT, BOLT, BOLT.    I have the small one and my brother and I have customized it to fit like a glove. Really take the time to line it up right.  I've just got to do my bottom bars to the frame and then I'm going to make an extra one for a template.   Chuck................

[THE COLONEL]

Do you have the bar yet?  If not, the Smilth Brothers already sell bars that have that plate on them, so you don't have to worry about wleding it.....it's done for you.

[RoscoePColtrain]

To be honest, I don't even have the car yet.  What I'm doing is a lot of research before I undertake it and of course gathering funds.  I had my eye on a 68 Charger, but declined after seeing it in person, too much bondo and only a 318 car.  I was thinking that although building it to my liking will be a labour of love, I want to enjoy the car too, at least while i'm young and before the wife wants to take that money and put it towards a new house as well.  So soon, I will be getting Scotlea to build me one.  I have many options to choose, this being one of the minor ones.

[THE COLONEL]

To be honest, I don't even have the car yet.  What I'm doing is a lot of research before I undertake it and of course gathering funds.  I had my eye on a 68 Charger, but declined after seeing it in person, too much bondo and only a 318 car.  I was thinking that although building it to my liking will be a labour of love, I want to enjoy the car too, at least while i'm young and before the wife wants to take that money and put it towards a new house as well.  So soon, I will be getting Scotlea to build me one.  I have many options to choose, this being one of the minor ones.

Well, you can't go wrong with Patrick buolding your car.  He does fantastic work.  When I saw his work in person....my jaw hit the ground!  WOW!!!

[Lostsheep]

Patrick's work is very nice.

[JimShine]

We make a small early bar that mounts to your bumper bracket bolts. Absolutely no mods to the car. And its sturdy. My bar saved my hood and grille in an accident.

A video of the prototype (the mounting tabs are not perfected on this unit)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=QA8UURcfqYw

[THE COLONEL]

I saw those, and they are very nice too.

[tomdroptop]

The one Jim is showing is almost liek the one I have & it seems very nice. Got mine from Bill the beauty & the geek guy. Being Aluminum its not heavy either... 

[JimShine]

Tom, yeah, I had that one too (and we used one on Lee1). It wasn't Georgia accurate though, so we reverse engineered a real one. That one is great though because it looks like the Cali bars and being aluminum it is extremely lightweight.

[tomdroptop]

Right Jim.....I was there for Lee1 unveiling in GA that weekend w/John Schneider had a great time & liked that bar to go that route w/mine.

[Badbob]

The originals were welded, the k-member was partially weld to the frame also. often imitated, never duplicated.

[JimShine]

Lee1's was not welded. It was bolted on (I still have the original bumper). I assume the 2nd car also was done that way. The bolts go through what were intended to be fog light mounting holes. They drilled holes in the bumper for them. After those first few, they did infact weld them on to the bumper on the small style. The wide ones were welded to the subframes, but they were built with the intention of being wleded. The small ones were bought off the shelf for an existing use.


Tom, I remember you being there. You had the coolest car.

[tomdroptop]

Jim LOL I wish thats actually my buddy Johns car I was a co-pilot & got some seriously cool video of Schneider as we blew by hanging out his sunroof.

[JR]

What gave the producers the idea for the pushbar I wonder?

And was the first pushbar made to fit? I assume it was for another vehicle when they found it and retrofitted it to the Charger. A police car pushbar maybe??

I always wondered that.

[Mike DC]

 
The pushbar was another one of those hillbilly/redneck touches to the car.  Not really any specific functional reason.
The first ones (well, the first 3.5 seasons of the show) were just an off-the-shelf pushbar from a common catalog. 

I don't think anyone's ever searched out exactly what application the narrow GL pushbars were originally produced for.  Whatever it was, it's not being sold anymore and there were several different ones used on the show.  They had to be somewhat trimmed & reworked to fit the Chargers.  They were bolted onto the stock Charger bumpers  (they drilled holes) in season#1-2.  By season#3 the pushbars were being welded onto the stock Charger front bumpers.


The smaller pushbars looked cool but they didn't work very well.  (They just rotated backwards & smashed out the plastic grille divider whenever they got hit, they didn't always stay on the car during hard hits, they didn't clear the loading ramps on the show's car transporter trucks, etc.)  So the TV crew switched all the cars over to custom-built wider pushbars during season#4.


None of the pushbars (wide or narrow) ever cleared the TV show's takeoff ramps very well. 
The crew got into the habit of cutting off the lower half of the pushbars on the jump-car GLs.

[JimShine]

Yeah, the wide bars used on the jump cars were trimmed to just the two horizontal bars and enough of a bracket to hold them together welded straight to the bumper.