Thread: Making A Nudge Bar - BA Falcon

You might consider not fitting a bull bar. Install the lights. Really good lights. Good lights in desolate areas are great. In addition to the light you aim to the front, you might aim a pair angled off to the left and right. That's where the roo will come from. If you can see the wildlife coming toward you then you’ll have time to slow down or stop.

For the nudge bar to be of any use it’ll have to be tough and that equates to being heavy. There’s not much on cars that don’t have a solid chassis to bolt anything like that on to. I’ve got a BA Falcon. They're not so mighty in that regard, really. So much thin metal, alloy, or plastic. Depressing, I know, but that’s just the way they are.

The added weight of a bar like that will result in reduced performance and poor fuel economy. The money you save on fuel bills can be set aside for the repair of the occasional dingle you have. And of course, that’s why the lights will serve you so well. If you see it coming you won’t hit it.

If you manage to get a bar attached, and you hit a roo, then the bar would probably permit you to drive home, but the force of the impact had to go somewhere. The damage will have been transferred to the mounts. Without a solid chassis the mounting points you use to secure the bar will have taken the force of the impact and will be bent, twisted, or torn; possibly to the extent that your car might be a right-off.

While EF's comments about a bull bar are correct, I felt that the "nudge" bar Smidsy mentions is one of those small bars for which the sole purpose is mounting lights or club badges. As such the weight would not impact the integrity of front suspension or transmit forces to the rest of the vehicle, at least, not significantly more than any furry impact. There is still the issue of convenient mounting points.

Nudge Bar.jpg

An old style bull bar fabricated from heavy channel and pipe that wrapped around the front of the vehicle offered good protection. It also weighed around 150Kg and threw out the steering. It was more akin to a "cow catcher" seen on American trains.

If you were looking at full blown bull bars, a Smart bar would be a better option.

Ford-Falcon-BA-and-BF1-10-02-to-09-06-SmartBar-bull-bar-thumbnail.jpg

Ford Archives - SmartBar

Regards
Paul

PS: No affiliation with any of the above.

In Queensland, only a proper locally made "nudge" bar is acceptable.

Screenshot 2023-07-06 at 9.41.36 am.jpg

I think a ‘properly made’ bar is pretty much the go nowadaze.
Airbags and all that other safety crap on modern cars.
My ute has an alloy bar which had two humongus spotlights on it, they were so wanky looking and vulnerable to parking damage here in the city I took them off and flogged them on gumtree.
Ive been thinking of a light bar but haven’t got around to it yet.
H.

I would love to get a full bar like that but I'm on a pension and that is way beyond my means.

What I'm thinking guys is something like the ECB bar, but that bar goes under the bumper and has a mounts bracket seperate to the bar.
My thinking is run it through the black vents so I don't sacrifice ground clearance - here in Queensland we have very deep & pronounced gutters and bottoming out is an issue.



ECB.jpg

Originally Posted by smidsy

What I'm thinking guys is something like the ECB bar, but that bar goes under the bumper and has a mounts bracket seperate to the bar.
My thinking is run it through the black vents so I don't sacrifice ground clearance - here in Queensland we have very deep & pronounced gutters and bottoming out is an issue.



ECB.jpg

I had one like that years ago when I bought my Discovery 2 (Land Rover). But I took it off and sold it to a bloke in Perth - and fitted a full ECB alloy bull-bar in its place.
These days I have a Discovery 4 which I bought new - and had a full ARB steel bull-bar fitted to it in Perth before I drove it home. It has saved me from front end damage a number of times (I uses to drive regularly between Perth and Kalgoorlie - mostly at night / early morning - when I was working down there). We travel across the Nullarbor every few years or so to visit family in SA & Tassie. The steel bar has been very handy for mounting long range phone and radio aerials, plus a couple of large and powerful driving lights. I also have an LED light bar mounted across the top under the roof rack which gives me very good illumination of the sides of the road, but tend to find that the glare / reflection off the new style of reflective road signage is a bit of a pain - so often turn this off unless there's a lot of roo's around.

ECB is a Queensland company. Might be worth contacting them to see if they have anything available or can recommend something suitable.