Reviews for ARB Deluxe Combination Bull Bar Bumper for 07-18 Jeep Wrangler JK
Beautiful bumper. High quality fit and finish. Bag of bolts was solved by going to the parts list and matching them up for each assembly. The fog light mount was a chore to install ended up taking the lights out. Mounting the bracket and using forceps to install the bolts that hold the fog light in. Instruction sheet was lacking. Winch mounted right in. The whole package makes my Jeep look so good.
The bumper is great. The material and build quality seem really well made. This thing is a bear to install. I am handy but also not turning wrenches all the time and this took me 4-6hrs to install. I think the time they indicate should be longer. If you have a lift and all the right tools, maybe just maybe 2hrs is feasible. Great looking bumper and the lines match the Jeep so well. Buy it, but have it installed if you are a novice.
FINALLY started the install. Had the (ARB) bumper sprayed by Line-X and it looks even better than the original (if that's possible). 4 stars because the install is very difficult, parts just come jumbled-up in a plastic bag and the instruction booklet sucks. Watch as many YouTube videos that you can find before starting the install. Any posters who say it's and "easy install" DIDN"T INSTALL IT THEMSERLVES !
Heavy duty bumper, quality powder coat finish. I paid extra for the multistage powdercoat finish included on this ARB bumper. Install was way more involved than I expected, be prepared to spend many hours to do it right. Using an angle grinder to remove the factory crush cans from the OE bumper and transfering those to the new ARB bumper isn't stated anywhere. Also, save yourself the headache of cutting and splicing the factory fog light harness (some wire included) to make them fit, and just buy the 18" fog light extension pigtail set (pt#97109.0915). Simple plug and play, why screw around. Also, if you're not running a winch right away and don't want a huge hole, ARB has a winch cover plate kit (pt#3550150) that finishes the bumper out nice. The "D-ring" dimensions are 3/4" shackle with 7/8" pins too. The only reason I gave this 4/5 stars was for the pain of installation. Everything about this bumper is heavy duty, and you will notice the weight change on the front end while driving. Solid bumper.
Very well built. Everything fit precisely, and the bumper looks great. Overall, I'm very satisfied. Took me about 6 hrs start to finish, including removing old bumper. Pain points: inaccessible fog light bracket mounting bolts and getting the chassis mounting bolts to thread into painted captive nuts on the bumper. There are several places where fastener access was an issue. Instructions, as others have said, are just detailed enough to keep you from going astray, but they are quite brief. You get a bag-o-hardware, with a table that doesn't quite match telling you where to use each piece. A pictorial would have helped here, the fastener descriptions are in Aussie-speak and somewhat cryptic. I have lots left over and appear to be short two bolts. The winch delete "pan cover kit" is not included, a call to Quadratec got it ordered.
Everything looks great. Questionable instructions. Mainly with which bolts to use at certain steps. Wired indicator lights to find out the bulbs were installed backwards and wouldn't work. Biggest problem I had was actually trying to buy this bumper from Quadratec. Took about 3 weeks to get delivered. Only reason I waited was the 10% off code I had.
The quality of this product is excellent but the instructions, like most things ARB (I've found so far) are pretty bad.
Bumper is arguably the best looking. I've had one on my JK for almost 9 years now and it survived Tboning a van at 35 with no damage (their fault). There's only 2 problems with the Bumper and it really lets down the total package with ARB. The mounting brackets for the fog lights are the worst design I've ever seen on any Jeep part. They block the bolts in where you can't reach them. So if you want to install different fog lights, you have to remove the entire bumper again to do it. The engineer I guess, was asleep that day. Also the top plate surrounding the winch is about half an inch too close to the grill which prevents you from popping it out easily to switch out your headlights as well. So overall the bumper makes it an absolute pain to change or fix your lights. Which sucks because otherwise its an amazing bumper, ARB really shot themselves in the foot there. I'll be replacing mine with a different bumper because I cannot remove the entire thing everytime I need to service a light.