Trying to decide on a new bumper

[Yoinkers]

no air is getting to that guys radiator

[ljvsnyder]

Well decision is made, showed my wife all the different bumpers and she said she liked the Smittybilt. Before it is asked I didn't lead the witness in anyway, as that is the one I was leaning towards. The deposit is put down and the product should be here sometime before the turn of the century, it has been delayed several times, now those lazy union dock workers are holding everything up. No offense if anyone works at the docks.

[Timmy]

no air is getting to that guys radiator

Haha, the Jeep's can handle Moab temps in 4-low without any air being forced across the radiator other than what the fans pull. I think it'll be fine ;-)

[ljvsnyder]

Well I finally received and installed my Smittybilt SRC Gen 2 front bumper. In my opinion easiest mod to date. Product came packaged in a heavy duty box I could use as a casket and wrapped in some type of foam wrap and bubble wrap. Only had one issue with install either I stripped the nut on the driver side while installing or the nut was bad to begin with. Simple tap and good as gold. Discounting that time total install time was little less than 1 hour using hand tools and light duty cordless impact wrench. The instructions say to drill out the bumper holes and to drill a hole in the crash bar below. I can say on my 2013 this is not necessary. The 1/2' bit went straight through without doing anything and the crash bar bolt hole already exist. I assume there was some change to the design to allow that to work, and no one told the technical writers. The bumper also came with brackets for aftermarket fog lights. I did not need them as I am running the stock fogs. My only two issues I have and one is specific with this bumper is the fact that the fogs stick out of the buckets a little more than I like. The second and applies to most if not all the bumper manufacturers and that is the lack of a routing mechanism for offroad lights. a simple hole in the tube work or at least a hole in the top plate to run the wire through.









Interesting thing when I took this photo google goggles picked it up as a bar code.

[Timmy]

Very nice! How funny, I just put my ARB bumper on this weekend. Wish I could say my install went as smoothly, however, I learned just how in-accurate the Ausie's are in the fabrication process.

Here's the good/bad about the ARB bumper:

GOOD

• Looks great
• Powder coating is awesome
• Has hi-jack lift points
• Has some nice pre-drilled holes for mounting other gear
• Cheaper than AEV (if you are looking for a full width.)

BAD

• Fabrication is not exactly accurate, had numerous mount points not lining up
• Instructions leave something to be desired, a few extra words here and there would save a ton of time, let alone more pictures (in color would be a plus.)
• Some very stupid design decisions. They have you drill two new holes in the bumper when they could have just added a few inches on the bumper to reach to existing holes already in place.
• Mounting of fog lights is retarded. Uses too long of bolts that get bent on install. Can't replace fog lights without removing the entire bumper.
• They literally include a "bag" of nuts, bolts, washers, etc. Took me easily an hour to line up the right bolts with the manuals various steps and separate everything out in a logical manner.

[KaiserBill]

Very nice! How funny, I just put my ARB bumper on this weekend. Wish I could say my install went as smoothly, however, I learned just how in-accurate the Ausie's are in the fabrication process.

Here's the good/bad about the ARB bumper:

GOOD

• Looks great
• Powder coating is awesome
• Has hi-jack lift points
• Has some nice pre-drilled holes for mounting other gear
• Cheaper than AEV (if you are looking for a full width.)

BAD

• Fabrication is not exactly accurate, had numerous mount points not lining up
• Instructions leave something to be desired, a few extra words here and there would save a ton of time, let alone more pictures (in color would be a plus.)
• Some very stupid design decisions. They have you drill two new holes in the bumper when they could have just added a few inches on the bumper to reach to existing holes already in place.
• Mounting of fog lights is retarded. Uses too long of bolts that get bent on install. Can't replace fog lights without removing the entire bumper.
• They literally include a "bag" of nuts, bolts, washers, etc. Took me easily an hour to line up the right bolts with the manuals various steps and separate everything out in a logical manner.

How do you know your Jeep isn't built to the maximum tolerances or slightly beyond it?

[ljvsnyder]

Looks good. I was really surprised with the simplicity now i need a winch.

[Pznivy]

Very nice! How funny, I just put my ARB bumper on this weekend. Wish I could say my install went as smoothly, however, I learned just how in-accurate the Ausie's are in the fabrication process.

Here's the good/bad about the ARB bumper:

GOOD

• Looks great
• Powder coating is awesome
• Has hi-jack lift points
• Has some nice pre-drilled holes for mounting other gear
• Cheaper than AEV (if you are looking for a full width.)

BAD

• Fabrication is not exactly accurate, had numerous mount points not lining up
• Instructions leave something to be desired, a few extra words here and there would save a ton of time, let alone more pictures (in color would be a plus.)
• Some very stupid design decisions. They have you drill two new holes in the bumper when they could have just added a few inches on the bumper to reach to existing holes already in place.
• Mounting of fog lights is retarded. Uses too long of bolts that get bent on install. Can't replace fog lights without removing the entire bumper.
• They literally include a "bag" of nuts, bolts, washers, etc. Took me easily an hour to line up the right bolts with the manuals various steps and separate everything out in a logical manner.

It looks great tho. Now that its on, do you l love it? Lots of bumpers require you to take the bumper off to alter fog lights.

[Timmy]

It looks great tho. Now that its on, do you l love it? Lots of bumpers require you to take the bumper off to alter fog lights.

Thx so much. Yep, love the bumper, love the way it looks. I didn't realize that so many bumpers required they be taken off to get at the fog lights. That is just retarded given how easy they are to access from behind. I was thinking I could replace the stupid bolt/nuts with a clip type bolt that I've seen used on license plate holder for vehicles (no idea what they are called, I just know I have two that are too large for this application but the idea is the same.) If I had those on, then it would simply be four screws to undo from the back and the fogs could pop right out. Truthfully, I could get the fog lights out easily, that's not the issue. The issue is in trying to put them back in because I would have no way of accessing the nut because it's sandwiched between the fog light bracket and the bumper itself. Sooooo dumb.

[Gunner]

Both you guys bumpers look great