Reviews for Quadratec QRC Front Winch Ready Bumper for 18-24 Jeep Wrangler JL & Gladiator JT
The bumper is nice and sturdy. It looks great and packaged well. Overall experience is good, taking apart the factory plastic one wasn’t that hard. Putting this one went relatively smooth except the areas for the fog lights. The instructions are decent but they could be a little bit better if it was a diagram and not a picture that just had areas circled. The are for the fog lights isn’t the best design by any means. This is the part that took the longest. If you have big fingers this will be a struggle. You think they’d come up with a better way. If you have to replace the lights at any point it’s going to be a struggle again. Overall I like the bumper and install was pretty easy overall.
I've had the bumper for 8 months or so now so I have enough experience to review fully I think.
Good: Value! Got mine when they were still $350, but even at $450 (as of this review) it's a pretty extraordinary value. Absolutely get your money's worth. Very nice looking and a perfect match for dimensions/lines of a Sport/Sahara. Has just the right combo of aggressive and functional without looking out of place on the trail OR mall crawling. Mounted a Smittybilt 9500 winch w/syn line and hawse fairlead and it looks fantastic - Perfectly contained but still sits up enough to be accessible. Love that there are two sets of aux light mounts. Fender tubes give even more options for mounting lights.
Bad: Like others, I also could only mount with 7 bolts. Pretty odd but consistent mfg defect it seems. Rust has begun forming pretty heavily already. Suspect it has to do with winter roads (mag chloride/sand), but pretty disappointing. Kudos to Quadratec though, they shipped a replacement out no-questions asked. Always top notch support. Looking at an additional coating/rust prevention before I put the replacement on. Finally, i'd like to see the fog lights altered to be recessed less. Don't necessarily need to be flush, but it definitely hinders a wide pattern beam the way they are.
I like the look of the bumper on my gladiator. I put the bumper on by myself as my help did t show. I planned on installing the winch and bolting all at once , but with no help I opted to mount bumper then the winch. It is doable for one person. The only thing I do not like with my full with is the passenger side almost hits the fender and the drive about a 1/4 inch from fender, not real noticeable but I would like it to be even on both sides. I even loosened all the bolts and tightened them back up alternating them as I torqued them but no change. I mounted a 9500lb Smittybilt winch no problem even with bumper on.
I love the look of the bumper, and installation was fairly easy. I do have three small complaints.
1. There was slight damage to one spot on the powder coating (my most minor complaint).
2. One of the “extra” light mounting brackets was slightly bent.
3. As another reviewer also stated- the holes for winch mounting are too far back. The winch installs basically touching the grille. I may need to drill new mounting holes, or may try to insert spacers on the bumper bolts to allow more clearance. Would be such an easy fix at the factory!
Overall I love the look and would recommend the bumper, but the winch issue is unfortunate.
The bumper arrived quickly and was well packaged. It looks to be good quality and did not disappoint. The fogs lights were a bit of a challenge but went together well. The only problem I had was the winch mounting holes were too far back and caused the winch to rub against the grill. I have the Warn V10 so maybe a smaller winch would be better. I had to drill new mounting holes to move it forward. The winch plate itself is designed so it’s almost impossible to get your hands in to start the bolts for the winch. Maybe install the winch before mounting the bumper? Anyway it is a nice bumper just wish it would have been thought out better for installation
Just installed the stubby version of this bumper on a 2020 JL Rubicon. The bumper mounted pretty easily. One tip - get the four inside bolts threaded and tightened up before putting the four nuts on.
I also installed a Smittybilt XRC 9,500 winch. You can't put this on after installing the bumper. AND...it won't fit at all without first installing three large washers as spacers over all 8 mounting points. This is easy with the four studs on the bumper. For the frame (the inside bolt holes) I used electrical tape to hold each washer in position, taping three over each of the four bolt holes. Without these, the bumper can't be tightened because the winch presses against the grill.
It appears to me that Quadratech could move those holes a half inch or so forward, which would be enough to mount the bumper without spacers.
I like the bumper, and I like the winch. But it would have saved me a lot of extra work had I known in advance that I'd have to use spacers, and that I couldn't install the winch after the bumper had been mounted.
The product design is great in my opinion. Hard to install properly the hardware (brackets) of the fog lights if you have big hands. I felt Mojave Gladiator just a little loose when you drive, but after install a heavy duty bumper and winch, the driving is much better and controlled. In my case, took almost 12 weeks to delivery the bumper and I noticed a little wrinkled over the bull bar during install that I’m fine with that. Anyway it’s a great acquisition to you Jeep.
Very sturdy bumper. I have a front mounted receiver hitch so I had to modify the bumper to except it. There goes the warranty. The winch was very difficult to mount as there was not a lot of room to get to the mounting bolts. The bumper mounted very well. Once the winch was mounted it was very difficult to get the grill back on. Matter of fact now that I got it on getting the grill off is impossible. It needs another 1/2 to 3/4 inch to make it work. I will have to loosen the bumper bolts somewhat to get the grill off.
-Welds & cut Finish: 10 Beautiful job.
-Paint Quality: 10 Great coatings!!! I expected that I would need a better coating to my standards.
-Fitment: 7 Had one of 8 mounting holes that was off-center. Not sure what to do with it yet.
-Light housing mounts: 7 Threads are REALLY tight due to the paint. I just drilled through them and used the enclosed nuts on the other side.
I have the stubby version (no winch) mounted on a Gladiator.
I loved the QRC bumper on my JKUR. It was awesome.
This bumper is great. It's solid.
However, putting the stock LED fog lights in (JTR) was hugely frustrating. like others, i stripped a couple of the button screws and ended up drilling out some of the holes. There's not enough space to get some of the nuts back behind the mount point. It's just a bad install process.
Mounting the bumper was better, but marginally so. Turns out that the tolerances the bumper requires are very tight. One of the holes on my Gladiator frame wasn't quite open enough and i had to grind it out, but once i got it on, it was solid.
The only other failing of this bumper is that you can't use the stock skid plate under the stock bumper. On the Rubicon, it's a study piece of steel. Since the QRC bumper doesn't really replace it, it would've been great if the QRC design had accommodated leaving the skid plate in place.