I'm Ryan from extremeterrain.com, and this is my review and installation of the ARB Front
Bumper with Bullbar, fitting all 2007 and up JKs.
Today, we're gonna talk through the installation of this bumper, which I am going to give a
strong two out of three wrenches.
This does require some cutting of both your factory bumper and your frame horns to get
this installed.
So, it's probably going to take you over two hours for this installation, but we'll talk
more about that in just a second.
This bumper is going to be full of both on-road and off-road features, and it is incredibly
well built, which also makes it one of the most expensive front bumpers that we offer.
So, if you're looking for a full-width front bumper, really well built, gonna last a very
long time, and you have the budget for it, I think this is going to be a pretty nice
choice for you.
However, if you are looking for something a little bit less expensive that has similar
features, maybe not quite the build quality or quite the quality of finish as this bumper,
there are going to be some less expensive options out there.
This bumper is also going to be unique because it is airbag compatible.
Now, that's not to say that the other bumpers that bolt directly on to your frame horns
are going to make your airbag useless, because they're not.
But this bumper is specifically designed to use the factory crush cans in your factory
bumper, keeping that airbag compatibility.
As I said before, this is a very well built bumper.
Now, because this is a full-width bumper, of course, it's gonna be heavier than a mid
or a stubby, but even for a full-width bumper, this weighs a ton.
This is very heavy duty, very strong, faded, gusseted.
It's going to hold up to anything you can throw at it.
And just by looking at the weld, you can tell there was a lot of care in assembling this
bumper.
This also has one of ARB's high-quality coatings on it, which is a multi-stage coating process,
which means this is never going to cause you any issues as far as rusting, or corrosion,
like some of the less expensive bumpers on the market might.
This coating is going to hold up very, very well for you.
Now, as far as features, this does have a ton of them.
Right in the front in here, you can see it has a winch mount built into it, and this
mounts the winch very low, which gives you almost a sunken winch style look.
You have your fairly mount which is going to be in the center of the bumper instead
of up on top of it, like some of the other bumpers that are on the market.
And it just gives a very clean look to the front of the Jeep when you have a winch on
it, being that you can hide a lot of the body of the winch.
Now, this does have two toe hooks, two recovery hooks, and they're gonna be down on the bottom
of the bumpers, still very, very strong.
They're going to be right over the frame horns, giving them all of their strength, but it's
a little bit of a different style than some of the other bumpers.
It'll have a D-ring mount or shackle mount right in the center of the bumper itself.
This bumper is designed to accept your factory fog lights, which is always the nice feature.
You're already gonna have those lights, the wiring, the switching.
Why not purchase a bumper that will give you the ability to bolt them right into your new
bumper?
And this will do that.
This also has some additional lights on the outside corners of it.
It has marker lights, or turn signal lights.
However you wanna wire them up on the outside of the bumper, again, making this a little
bit more unique than some of the others that are out there.
Up on top of the bullbar, you have a couple of additional lighten up tabs, so you can
put some auxiliary lights on this bumper if you choose to.
As we said before, one of the biggest things that makes this bumper unique is the fact
that it does use those factory crush cans with the factory crush can extension bracket
when you install this bumper.
A lot of the other bumpers on the market...you just throw your factory bumper away.
This one, you remove it, you make a couple of cuts, and you reuse those crush cans.
So, like I said before, we are gonna go with a strong two out of three wrenches because
of the cutting and also the wiring that's involved in you're getting this bumper installed,
and over two hours for the whole installation.
The first step is going to be, of course, removing that factory front bumper, which
you'll do by removing your frame cover, and your splash guard.
You're going to remove the fog light sockets out of the fog light housings, and remove
the eight knots that are holding that factory bumper in place, finally, just giving it a
pull to remove it from the Jeep.
After that, you can remove the fog light housings from the factory bumper and attach them into
your new ARB bumper, and mark and cut your factory bumper to remove those crush cans,
and install them in your new ARB bumper.
Now, you are also gonna have to make a couple of cuts on those frame horns.
This is the time to do that since you have everything apart.
You'll mark and cut the frame horns before installing the bumper on the Jeep.
Then you can go ahead, set the bumper over the frame horns, bolt it down.
You can install your winch before or after installing the bumper on the Jeep.
Usually, I recommend bolting your winch to your bumper before installing the bumper on
the Jeep, because it's easier to get to those wrench mounting bolts.
And that's still the case here.
However, with the weight of this bumper, adding the winch to it makes it very cumbersome to
try and move around.
So it's up to you whether you wanna do the winch while the bumper's on the Jeep, or while
it's still on the ground.
After you have all of that done, you are going to have to wire up those turn signal lights,
which is going to require a little bit of cutting, and some soldering, or splicing,
however you decide to get these hooked up.
You can set these up as a marker light, which is really what they're designed for, or if
you wanna get a little bit creative, you can even make them into a turn signal.
I mentioned before, this bumper does have a lot of features, and the build quality is
one of the highest that you'll find out there from the actual materials used to decoding
that's on this bumper.
And for all of that, you are going to pay a price.
This bumper comes in right around a thousand dollars, which is one of the more expensive
front bumpers that you can get for your JK.
But if you're looking for a very high quality bumper that's packed full of features and
has some unique features, and also one that's airbag compatible, this is gonna be one of
your only options out there.
However, if you're willing to give up some of those features, some of that build quality,
if you're on more of a budget, there are a lot of other options out there that are going
to work for a lot of you.
So, if you're looking for a bumper with a ton of features, really high build and coating
quality, and you have the budget for it, I would definitely recommend taking a look at
this one.
So, that's my review of the ARB Front Bumper with Bullbar, fitting all 2007 and up JKs,
that you can find right here at extremeterrain.com.