How to build good bumpers

[Ben Martin]

For 2012-2014, 225 used a homemade bumper cover attached by velcro. It wasn't always the prettiest (especially in 2014 when holes got poked through the cordura almost every competition), but it made for quick color changes and wasn't too intensive to make. I'd advocate making a cover for many lower-resource teams and only dealing with one set of bumpers, that way not a lot of time needs to go into designing and building the mounting system (and you can just use steel angle or something else heavy you can easily acquire from the hardware store).

If we were making bumpers today--I would build 2 sets, primarily to make sure we could set them as low to the ground as possible. I'd also use ballistic nylon or sailcloth for the sides instead of cordura, maybe the front and back as well.