Ibis Tek Lightbar brackets are not off-road worthy

[icentropy]

Howdy, this is a quick post just to warn anyone with an ibistek 78" light bar that the stock brackets (two sheet metal ones that attach to the windshield) are not able to handle even moderate off-road use.

I just got back from a weekend trip out to the desert. The lighbar snapped off the windshield on the third day! Since the day I mounted it I noticed the whole bar would move side-to-side quite a bit but never gave it too much thought. I figured I'd get around to securing it better some day. Well apparently it couldn't wait because on a dirt road last sunday, the right side of the lightbar itself snapped off. upon inspection the other side had stress cracks as well as both support brackets. You all might know aluminum does not fatigue well so a month of pavement driving and a few days of desert off-roading were all this thing could take before it gave way. I plan on making new brackets out of .25" tempered Aluminum that should keep the entire structure steady enough to avoid this problem, but since the light bar itself broke i'll not how to fix that as well.

So if any of you have an ibistek that is moving side-to-side i would suggest removing it ASAP and strengthing up those brackets before you break the bar itself. Wish i had.

On the other hand, the light coming out of the bar was awesome. the 6 HIDs worked perfectly, no issues at all and i was very happy with the lighting at night. I am still happy i bought and upgraded it, just wish i had upgraded the brackets before it caused damage.

[Readyman]

Please post some pics of the stress cracks and breaks, so I can figure out the reinforcing needed.

[STUDENT-DRIVER]

Not new to me, I made me some out of 1/4" stainless steel:

[Readyman]

Were they rockin' on the raised threaded inserts in the pillar?
Yeah, that's nice Student Driver

Howdy, this is a quick post just to warn anyone with an ibistek 78" light bar that the stock brackets (two sheet metal ones that attach to the windshield) are not able to handle even moderate off-road use.

I just got back from a weekend trip out to the desert. The lighbar snapped off the windshield on the third day! Since the day I mounted it I noticed the whole bar would move side-to-side quite a bit but never gave it too much thought. I figured I'd get around to securing it better some day. Well apparently it couldn't wait because on a dirt road last sunday, the right side of the lightbar itself snapped off. upon inspection the other side had stress cracks as well as both support brackets. You all might know aluminum does not fatigue well so a month of pavement driving and a few days of desert off-roading were all this thing could take before it gave way. I plan on making new brackets out of .25" tempered Aluminum that should keep the entire structure steady enough to avoid this problem, but since the light bar itself broke i'll not how to fix that as well.

So if any of you have an ibistek that is moving side-to-side i would suggest removing it ASAP and strengthing up those brackets before you break the bar itself. Wish i had.

On the other hand, the light coming out of the bar was awesome. the 6 HIDs worked perfectly, no issues at all and i was very happy with the lighting at night. I am still happy i bought and upgraded it, just wish i had upgraded the brackets before it caused damage.

[icentropy]

Ok finally had a chance to kinda clean out the hummer from the trip and take some pics.

Here's where the brackets were starting to crack


Here's the cracking end of the light bar (hard to see right on the edge)


Here's where the lightbar broke off completely


And the broken sad lightbar


Now it's time to start fixing....

[axemann]

What about rubber mounting them like they do with off road racing lights to cut back on the vibration?

[icentropy]

What about rubber mounting them like they do with off road racing lights to cut back on the vibration?

might very well be a good idea. I'm going to start with .25" aluminum brackets and see how that does, then maybe add some .25" rubber spacers between the brackets and the bar. Lastly if needed i'll add a center brace at the clearance lights. One way or another this sucker is gonna be mounted well and not give me any more trouble well at least not of the same variety.

[Readyman]

Wow,
IbisTek really missed the ball on this product. Wonder which legislator they paid off to get these approved for purchase by Uncle Sam.

[icentropy]

yeah, probably didn't sell that many or perhaps only sold one large set which then started faling off the trucks and the rest were shelved and we ended up with them

Eitherway, the lightbar is IMO a good product, it's the $5 brackets that caused all this. I appreciate the idea of "the lighter (no pun intended) the better" but you just can't cut weight on certain things and expect them to hold up.

[Action]

Wouldn't you need to use more than just one rubber washer per bolt to isolate the bolts from the metal?

Like the headlight mounts, the front and rear bolts do not touch each other.

Like the hardtop mounts that have a rubber mount above and below the mody brackets.

etc.

Maybe you could find something similar to the headlight mounts....screw them into the lightbar, then push into holes of a mounted bracket, hold in place, then install the second bracket over the studs at the other end?

Jason

[Ozhumvee]

You may also get away with replacing the aluminium bits with the same thing in steel, aluminium doesn't handle stress and vibration at all well in sheet form.

[actionpaintball]

Standard rule of thumb [very generic] is that steel is 3X heavier, and 3X stronger (tensile) over aluminum.

[tanhmmwv]

THANKS for posting this!
I just got mine 2 weeks ago.
painted it so far and now am in the process of fabbing up an " L" bracket.
I am trying to bolt on the windshiled frame, at the 2 rubber bumpers, and go to the IBIStek bar.

[icentropy]

Standard rule of thumb [very generic] is that steel is 3X heavier, and 3X stronger (tensile) over aluminum.

The rule of thumb i've always used is aluminum is you have to use 50% more aluminum to come up with the same amount of strength. And by using aluminum instead of steel you'll end up saving around 1/3 of the weight because of the added thickness. This is in comparison will low carbon mild steel.

If you bump up the aluminum to a reasonable quality such as 6061 and temper (or buy tempered) to T6 the ratio gets better. 7050 or 7075 to the T7 temper is basically just as strong as mild steel so you are saving the full weight amount, but you can't really bend or weld T7 material without loosing a large amount of the strength. The correct way to make things out of aluminum is the way AMG made our bodies and rail guards. It's all made out of 6061-0 temper, bent, welded, etc. THEN heat treated to T6 so the whole structure is quite strong.

The aluminum on the light bar and the brackets was plenty "strong" to hold up the bar. Its the side-to-side motion that fatiqued the aluminum to the point of failure. Stop the side to side motion one way or another and the problem will go away. IMO, the easiest way to do that if you still had the whole setup and hadn't mounted it, would probably be just to make some 45° angle brackets (stiffeners) on the corners, that or just make brackets so thick that they keep the assembly ridgid enough to not move. That's not really the correct way to do is as you're basically just overcoming a bad design with excessive use of material but heck that's what i'm gonna do mostly due to lazyness .

[fsutterbadass]

That thing just needs something to support it in the middle.....a bracket and nutsert kit that goes in the windshield frame between the glass sections....and you could drill some pass through holes in the center glass hold down that would allow bolts to pass through into the nutserts and mount a bracket there.
just my 2 cents.

Thanks,
Freddie