ShadowsPapa
Well-Known Member
- First Name
- Bill
- Joined
- Oct 12, 2019
- Threads
- 180
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- 29,416
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- 34,990
- Location
- Runnells, Iowa
- Vehicle(s)
- '22 JTO, '23 JLU, '82 SX4, '73 P. Cardin Javelin
- Occupation
- Retired auto mechanic, frmr gov't ntwrk security admin
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- #1
I bought one of the Badland Apex 12,000 winches a while back because it was cheap, strong, a decent deal - wasn't really sure how I wanted to mount a winch - receiver mount, bumper, or what?
I have been looking around for a long time for a "Rubicon take-off" front bumper, no luck (this is Iowa, sometimes getting basic stuff can be a challenge.)
I had read here and elsewhere (Wrangler forums, I believe- a huge, long thread on this bumper) about a "knock-off" being sold on eBay for something like $435. It looked a lot like the Rubicon steel bumper and the folks who had bought it seemed to think it was ok - no real or major complaints.
In my case the box was shredded when it arrived, but then they aren't THAT well packaged for a 90 pound battering ram in a cardboard box. The only real damage was the bar (paint dinged and gouged, but then it was wrapped directly with the winch plate - DUH!) and the left plastic fog light bezel (by the way, the Mopar originals are plastic, too) and where the ears or ends that come off meet the main bumper body the paint was gouged. Again, metal against metal, it's to be expected unless the edges of the steel are beveled or chamfered, it's an edge against paint where it screws together.
No major or actual physical damage. I will contact the seller and they'll send me a replacement fog light bezel - others have done the same - but I went ahead and bought a pair of Mopar bezels to have as they lack the sensor holes these bumper fog light bezels have. I'll have spares, then - they are plastic, after-all.
Anyway - on to the meat of this all.
If you were NOT installing a winch, this is pretty much plug and play. It fits, period.
Unless you want to spend half an hour harvesting your fog light harness out of the original bumper, buy a new one for 30 or so bucks. I harvested mine - I'm maxed out on spending on this thing for a while.
The bumper comes with decent LED fog lights - and brackets so you can use your original fog lights from your old bumper if you wish. I did just that, will save these others for spares - or may swap them in later, not sure yet, but since I had my original bumper stripped down to atoms already, why not strip out the fog lights, what's 4 more screws when you are taking out 150 (it felt like that many)
So if it's a bumper replacement, and you want to use the tow hooks that come with the new bumper, it's literally bolt on - but do check all the screws. I wasn't thrilled with how not tight some of them were. So I checked every single bolt and screw, and there's a lot of them.
Some people complained that you needed to do certain things to get the bumper bolts to line up in the frame holes - not a problem in my case. Granted, I swapped out the tow hooks and used my original black ones because I preferred the bolts in my originals, and I didn't mind my hooks being black and I liked the finish on my originals a bit better.
I figured since I was going the steel bumper - might as well do the skid plate, too. And that's where I'm waffling now. It meant I had to totally give up a front receiver and I'm not really wanting to do that. With the Rubicon skid plate, there is ZERO way to put on a front receiver as the skid plate brackets use the same holes as the receiver, AND the brackets that hold the skid plate along with the "nutserts" make the space between the frame rails too narrow. A receiver will no longer fit, there ain't space for those fancy nutserts and the skid plate brackets, no way, no how, can't be done without shoving the frame rails apart a good quarter inch and if I could do that I'd be complaining to Jeep about a cheap, flimsy frame!
Back to the bumper -
That beast is HEAVY. It fit fine, I did some touch-up on the scratches using textured paint, got the Rubicon skid plate up in place, etc. and so far, so good.
I measured the height of the front of my truck before and after -
From the floor to the outer "edge" of the black part of my front fenders it was exactly 37" from floor to that point on the black part of the fenders - BEFORE the change.
AFTER the swap, with skid plate, winch, and bumper, it dropped the front down a full 1/2" to 36.5"
So I lost 1/2" due to the extra weight - and I have Rubicon front springs under my front.
Looks like I'll be putting those 3/4" spacers up front after-all!
Now the tricky parts - that Apex 12,000 winch is a beast, too - it's heavy and HUGE. And that made for some troubles.
To use the winch plate that comes with the bumper, I had to modify the brackets that bolt to the bottom of the winch plate and then to the frame as the ends of the included brackets would interfere with or hit the skid plate brackets. There wasn't enough space for both, so I have to shorten those brackets about 1/4". No loss of strength or meat because it was extra on the end of the bracket past the bolts that go into the frame to bolt the brackets to the frame.
The clutch lever on the winch rubbed the bumper - the lever didn't quite sit high enough to clear the bumper when turning the lever to "Free-wheeling" or to disengage the winch. Worse, with the bumper's top bar installed, the lever couldn't be turned to disengage at all - it hit the bar bigly. So I removed and trimmed the end off the winch release lever. Works fine now.
I wanted to leave the electronics ON the top of the winch. I figured it covered the to of the winch, would be easy to plug the remote control into there, and I didn't want to complicate the install - well, not in that way. They include all the parts to move that to a remote spot (say, under the hood by the battery) with the winch in the box, but still.....I figured leave it in the winch. It doesn't rise into the grill area with this bumper, sits low, so won't impact air flow, etc.
Well, test fitting the bumper - oops, it hits the winch! That means I had to cut into the new bumper for clearance.
So I put a brand new wheel in my little angle grinder and went to work trimming the bumper opening on the top to clear the winch - and touching up the paint. I filed the opening to smooth it after grinding, removing any rough or sharp edges as I am Captain Klutz when it comes to cuts and slivers and pieces of steel in my hand. (You can still see the blood in my garage, and on the phone out there, from calling 911 20 years ago after a little table saw accident.)
Anywho - to make the bumper work with the HUGE winch I bought for whatever reason, I had to make some mods.(I'll never use it in Iowa - unless I slide into a creek this winter and need to winch myself back out (people die out there, go off the road, land in a creek or deep ditch and aren't found for weeks - seriously, not kidding)
* I trimmed the lever on the winch to clear the top bar.
* I trimmed the bumper opening to clear the winch top cover
* I trimmed the frame brackets of the bumper's winch plate to clear the skid plate brackets.
Even if I had no winch, I did the following -
* I harvested the fog light harness from my original bumper
* I transferred my tow hooks from my original bumper to the new one
* I used my original fog lights - have the new bumper's fog lights set aside as spares.
I may test them against my originals and see if I like them better but that's for down the road.
The bumper comes with brackets that you can bolt your factory LED fog lights to and then bolt the brackets to the bumper. OR you can use the LED fog lights they include in the bumper. They include a pigtail to convert and connect to the factory harness.
With the Rubicon skid plate for steel bumper, you cannot use those included red tow loops that bolt to the outside of the frame rails and point down. There's no room with them when you have a skid plate, not sure how anyone else is doing it.
I WANT MY RECIEVER BACK - not sure how the hell that's going to happen, though, not with a slid plate, so I may have to rethink my expensive skid plate purchase and go back to a simple air dam - dam.
These come with this bumper - you can't use these with a skid plate - no room for them to stick down, the skid plate is in the way. Bummer - I like them for some stupid reason.
This is where they'd bolt and stick down and forward - see, skid plate in in the way -
Red line is where I trimmed off the ends of the winch plate bracket to clear the skid plate bracket.
The green lines point to where the receiver would bolt to the frame...the other bolt with no green line pointing to it would simply have to be removed as it would interfere with any receiver in that space but with these brackets, there's just no way to put a receiver in there! DANG DANG DANG! So how did Rubicon owners mount a front receiver?? And Rubicon with a skid plate would have these same skid plate brackets, regardless of the bumper style if they had a skid plate...
OOPS!
There, that's better -
Air dam, receiver, bumper all stripped off...........
And this is where I had to cut the new bumper to clear the winch - It did go straight across, and I cut out about a 7/16" "notch" to clear the winch. To plug the holes where the bolts wen that held the filler plate in place I used plastic clips.
It was close but that cable just clears touching the grill. I didn't want it rubbing on the grill rubbing paint off.
I pulled it around and used a clamp to hold it away from the grill.
Sort of a mock-up. I got the lower plate brackets in place and tightened up the bolts.
A lot of folks said they had to use some sort of process, like tie straps or whatever to hold the winch plate in place while trying to get the bumper on and the bumper bolts through the holes. Honestly, I had no problem. I made sure all of the holes were wide open and lined up, removed those silver bolts.................
Oh, maybe I forgot to mention.............. I used a jack to hold the winch up since that was over 60 pounds of winch and steel plate.......but seriously, I didn't have any problems getting the bumper bolts into the frames and the nuts started.
I pulled the ends off the bumper to lighten it up a bit - my back is in bad shape and those ends alone aren't light!
When the new fog light bezels arrive tomorrow, I'll pop those in place.
Now if I can find some creative genius to find a way to put my receiver back in there, between those frame rails (I'd even pay 'em) I'll be SET........
This pic below shows the holes plugged with plastic plugs I bought off Amazon. There's two on each bumper end. If you don't use these ends, no big deal. The holes are for parking sensors not used in the USA - some of us suspect these were for sensors used in Wranglers sold to the European market? Personally I think the plugs look just fine. There's one at the very end, and one down low near the end.
I have been looking around for a long time for a "Rubicon take-off" front bumper, no luck (this is Iowa, sometimes getting basic stuff can be a challenge.)
I had read here and elsewhere (Wrangler forums, I believe- a huge, long thread on this bumper) about a "knock-off" being sold on eBay for something like $435. It looked a lot like the Rubicon steel bumper and the folks who had bought it seemed to think it was ok - no real or major complaints.
In my case the box was shredded when it arrived, but then they aren't THAT well packaged for a 90 pound battering ram in a cardboard box. The only real damage was the bar (paint dinged and gouged, but then it was wrapped directly with the winch plate - DUH!) and the left plastic fog light bezel (by the way, the Mopar originals are plastic, too) and where the ears or ends that come off meet the main bumper body the paint was gouged. Again, metal against metal, it's to be expected unless the edges of the steel are beveled or chamfered, it's an edge against paint where it screws together.
No major or actual physical damage. I will contact the seller and they'll send me a replacement fog light bezel - others have done the same - but I went ahead and bought a pair of Mopar bezels to have as they lack the sensor holes these bumper fog light bezels have. I'll have spares, then - they are plastic, after-all.
Anyway - on to the meat of this all.
If you were NOT installing a winch, this is pretty much plug and play. It fits, period.
Unless you want to spend half an hour harvesting your fog light harness out of the original bumper, buy a new one for 30 or so bucks. I harvested mine - I'm maxed out on spending on this thing for a while.
The bumper comes with decent LED fog lights - and brackets so you can use your original fog lights from your old bumper if you wish. I did just that, will save these others for spares - or may swap them in later, not sure yet, but since I had my original bumper stripped down to atoms already, why not strip out the fog lights, what's 4 more screws when you are taking out 150 (it felt like that many)
So if it's a bumper replacement, and you want to use the tow hooks that come with the new bumper, it's literally bolt on - but do check all the screws. I wasn't thrilled with how not tight some of them were. So I checked every single bolt and screw, and there's a lot of them.
Some people complained that you needed to do certain things to get the bumper bolts to line up in the frame holes - not a problem in my case. Granted, I swapped out the tow hooks and used my original black ones because I preferred the bolts in my originals, and I didn't mind my hooks being black and I liked the finish on my originals a bit better.
I figured since I was going the steel bumper - might as well do the skid plate, too. And that's where I'm waffling now. It meant I had to totally give up a front receiver and I'm not really wanting to do that. With the Rubicon skid plate, there is ZERO way to put on a front receiver as the skid plate brackets use the same holes as the receiver, AND the brackets that hold the skid plate along with the "nutserts" make the space between the frame rails too narrow. A receiver will no longer fit, there ain't space for those fancy nutserts and the skid plate brackets, no way, no how, can't be done without shoving the frame rails apart a good quarter inch and if I could do that I'd be complaining to Jeep about a cheap, flimsy frame!
Back to the bumper -
That beast is HEAVY. It fit fine, I did some touch-up on the scratches using textured paint, got the Rubicon skid plate up in place, etc. and so far, so good.
I measured the height of the front of my truck before and after -
From the floor to the outer "edge" of the black part of my front fenders it was exactly 37" from floor to that point on the black part of the fenders - BEFORE the change.
AFTER the swap, with skid plate, winch, and bumper, it dropped the front down a full 1/2" to 36.5"
So I lost 1/2" due to the extra weight - and I have Rubicon front springs under my front.
Looks like I'll be putting those 3/4" spacers up front after-all!
Now the tricky parts - that Apex 12,000 winch is a beast, too - it's heavy and HUGE. And that made for some troubles.
To use the winch plate that comes with the bumper, I had to modify the brackets that bolt to the bottom of the winch plate and then to the frame as the ends of the included brackets would interfere with or hit the skid plate brackets. There wasn't enough space for both, so I have to shorten those brackets about 1/4". No loss of strength or meat because it was extra on the end of the bracket past the bolts that go into the frame to bolt the brackets to the frame.
The clutch lever on the winch rubbed the bumper - the lever didn't quite sit high enough to clear the bumper when turning the lever to "Free-wheeling" or to disengage the winch. Worse, with the bumper's top bar installed, the lever couldn't be turned to disengage at all - it hit the bar bigly. So I removed and trimmed the end off the winch release lever. Works fine now.
I wanted to leave the electronics ON the top of the winch. I figured it covered the to of the winch, would be easy to plug the remote control into there, and I didn't want to complicate the install - well, not in that way. They include all the parts to move that to a remote spot (say, under the hood by the battery) with the winch in the box, but still.....I figured leave it in the winch. It doesn't rise into the grill area with this bumper, sits low, so won't impact air flow, etc.
Well, test fitting the bumper - oops, it hits the winch! That means I had to cut into the new bumper for clearance.
So I put a brand new wheel in my little angle grinder and went to work trimming the bumper opening on the top to clear the winch - and touching up the paint. I filed the opening to smooth it after grinding, removing any rough or sharp edges as I am Captain Klutz when it comes to cuts and slivers and pieces of steel in my hand. (You can still see the blood in my garage, and on the phone out there, from calling 911 20 years ago after a little table saw accident.)
Anywho - to make the bumper work with the HUGE winch I bought for whatever reason, I had to make some mods.(I'll never use it in Iowa - unless I slide into a creek this winter and need to winch myself back out (people die out there, go off the road, land in a creek or deep ditch and aren't found for weeks - seriously, not kidding)
* I trimmed the lever on the winch to clear the top bar.
* I trimmed the bumper opening to clear the winch top cover
* I trimmed the frame brackets of the bumper's winch plate to clear the skid plate brackets.
Even if I had no winch, I did the following -
* I harvested the fog light harness from my original bumper
* I transferred my tow hooks from my original bumper to the new one
* I used my original fog lights - have the new bumper's fog lights set aside as spares.
I may test them against my originals and see if I like them better but that's for down the road.
The bumper comes with brackets that you can bolt your factory LED fog lights to and then bolt the brackets to the bumper. OR you can use the LED fog lights they include in the bumper. They include a pigtail to convert and connect to the factory harness.
With the Rubicon skid plate for steel bumper, you cannot use those included red tow loops that bolt to the outside of the frame rails and point down. There's no room with them when you have a skid plate, not sure how anyone else is doing it.
I WANT MY RECIEVER BACK - not sure how the hell that's going to happen, though, not with a slid plate, so I may have to rethink my expensive skid plate purchase and go back to a simple air dam - dam.
These come with this bumper - you can't use these with a skid plate - no room for them to stick down, the skid plate is in the way. Bummer - I like them for some stupid reason.
This is where they'd bolt and stick down and forward - see, skid plate in in the way -
Red line is where I trimmed off the ends of the winch plate bracket to clear the skid plate bracket.
The green lines point to where the receiver would bolt to the frame...the other bolt with no green line pointing to it would simply have to be removed as it would interfere with any receiver in that space but with these brackets, there's just no way to put a receiver in there! DANG DANG DANG! So how did Rubicon owners mount a front receiver?? And Rubicon with a skid plate would have these same skid plate brackets, regardless of the bumper style if they had a skid plate...
OOPS!
There, that's better -
Air dam, receiver, bumper all stripped off...........
And this is where I had to cut the new bumper to clear the winch - It did go straight across, and I cut out about a 7/16" "notch" to clear the winch. To plug the holes where the bolts wen that held the filler plate in place I used plastic clips.
It was close but that cable just clears touching the grill. I didn't want it rubbing on the grill rubbing paint off.
I pulled it around and used a clamp to hold it away from the grill.
Sort of a mock-up. I got the lower plate brackets in place and tightened up the bolts.
A lot of folks said they had to use some sort of process, like tie straps or whatever to hold the winch plate in place while trying to get the bumper on and the bumper bolts through the holes. Honestly, I had no problem. I made sure all of the holes were wide open and lined up, removed those silver bolts.................
Oh, maybe I forgot to mention.............. I used a jack to hold the winch up since that was over 60 pounds of winch and steel plate.......but seriously, I didn't have any problems getting the bumper bolts into the frames and the nuts started.
I pulled the ends off the bumper to lighten it up a bit - my back is in bad shape and those ends alone aren't light!
When the new fog light bezels arrive tomorrow, I'll pop those in place.
Now if I can find some creative genius to find a way to put my receiver back in there, between those frame rails (I'd even pay 'em) I'll be SET........
This pic below shows the holes plugged with plastic plugs I bought off Amazon. There's two on each bumper end. If you don't use these ends, no big deal. The holes are for parking sensors not used in the USA - some of us suspect these were for sensors used in Wranglers sold to the European market? Personally I think the plugs look just fine. There's one at the very end, and one down low near the end.
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