ARB broken, mud and lots of broken parts

Went off-roading at Spring Creek in Houston yesterday . . my brother-in-law, in his '96 Tacoma with a 5-speed locked front and rear, ended up getting stuck in a ravine and his buddy with an ARB bumper on a 2002 Tacoma tried winching him out. The bolts that hold the ARB to the frame actually pulled away from the frame-ends during the winch.

Here's the related post on TTORA talking about the incident and the ARB 'design flaw'. http://www.ttora.com/forum/showthre...9452#post499452

Does the 4Runner ARB bumper mount the same way?

Here are some pics . . . we didn't have any of the wasp attack when we tried to back it out . . suffice to say the spotter ran away screaming. We ended up trying to go through the ravine at that pont ( a giant swarm of wasps surronded the back of my brother-in-law's Tacoma) only to get stuck at the end. After the winch failed, things got real interesting, with lots of digging, yanking and screaming.

In the end, I had to yank him out of the ravine with a lot of skinny pedal, using all the V8 goodness . . of course, this wasn't before getting myself stuck to the front bumper in liquid sand. We ended up pulling him out on his side and then flipping it over because it was just too tight of a spot to come out straight.

Another small note, he has broken three front axels now that he has a front locker. It's not selectable (I believe it's an Aussie unit), so everytime he loses traction while he's turning, an axle snaps.

As for carnage, he fried his turning rack and actually ended up bending the cross member. The axle snapped (part of the reason he was stuck so bad) and both outer tie-rods were bent. There was no body damage, except for a few scratches and the mirror.

the mounts are reinforced so you won't have the same problems as the previous gen ARB bumpers. ARB made a structural change in how the bumper is mounted.

link and pics not working for me... ??

but anyways...

Good Times said:

the mounts are reinforced so you won't have the same problems as the previous gen ARB bumpers. ARB made a structural change in how the bumper is mounted.

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And the crowd lets out a collective sigh of relief..

I can't see the pics either...

Funny you mention about the bumper pulling off. My friend has a Dodge Ram 1-ton Cummins (non-dually) and he bought Road Armor bumpers front and rear. We were camping a couple weeks ago and decided to pull some dead pine trees out for firewood and after pulling about 3 or so smaller trees we found a big one that was about 30' tall and 2 feet in diameter. He has sand/mud tires so traction wasn't really an issue until he met this tree. First pull he started spinning, then he backed up almost to the tree and gunned it took all the slack up in the chain and ripped the tree completely out. In the process, however, he nearly ripped his rear bumper completely off. Yes, he had the chain hooked to one of the provided D-ring shackles on his bumper. They came with the bumper and were HUGE, some of the biggest D-rings they make; like 4" across and 3/4" thick. Well guess where the weak spot was: Road Armor in all of its engineering beauty supplied him with 1/8" thick steel brackets with three 3/8" wide bolts per bracket. One of the holes on the bracket was only a half inch from the edge, which needless to say, toreout along with the bolts in the other holes bending the under-spec'd washers and sucking them through as well. The bracket was mangled and bumper was bent pretty bad. For all the money he spent on the bumpers it sure was a dissappointment to see how bad they skimped on the brackets...

OUTRNNR said:

... then he backed up almost to the tree and gunned it took all the slack up in the chain and ripped the tree completely out. In the process, however, he nearly ripped his rear bumper completely off. ...

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Here's your sign!

KMX3060 said:

Here's your sign!

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KMX3060 said:

Here's your sign!

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I agree....No bumper is going to withstand a 1 ton dually truck running full throttle and yanking the cable - you could probably break a caterpillar dump truck with that kind of stupid stunt. Not only that, had the cable snapped it would have acted like a butter knife and destroyed anything in range of the cable including people.

If he's expecting warranty he better change his story...

Here's a close up of the reinforced mount.



Not only is it using the standard front bumper mount it's also using the side of the frame so you get 2 different plane of support. Much better than the predecessor.

Additional photos can be found here.

Click on "Misc" and you will find a few ARB bumper photos.

KMX3060 said:

Here's your sign!

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:biggrin2: I was thinking the same thing. I tried to pull a similiar size tree up a steep hill with the 12k pound warn on the front of my powerwagon so I could chop it up and haul it off. Well the tree moved very little before smoke came out of the electric motor of the winch.......needless to say I quit that. Trying to move big trees is more work than it would seem.

Good Times said:

Here's a close up of the reinforced mount.

Not only is it using the standard front bumper mount it's also using the side of the frame so you get 2 different plane of support. Much better than the predecessor.

Additional photos can be found here.

Click on "Misc" and you will find a few ARB bumper photos.

Click to expand...

Does that mean you now have the ARB Winch bumper or is that from another truck?

mtnracer said:

Does that mean you now have the ARB Winch bumper or is that from another truck?

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Not my truck. It's the ARB test vehicle.

mtnracer said:

I agree....No bumper is going to withstand a 1 ton dually truck running full throttle and yanking the cable - you could probably break a caterpillar dump truck with that kind of stupid stunt. Not only that, had the cable snapped it would have acted like a butter knife and destroyed anything in range of the cable including people.

If he's expecting warranty he better change his story...

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He's not expecting a warranty. In fact one of the guys who was there with us owns a local metal shop and fabbed him a new bracket. The bumper eventually sprung back into form and everything was fine, well except for his ego and a part of his rear fender where the other end of the bumper bent in and scratched it pretty bad.

That being said, he probably should've attached it to his hitch, and the pull wasn't as violent as I made it sound plus we were using a chain with 3/8" thick links which really would've been dangerous if it snapped. Cables aren't all that dangerous when they snap because all of the released energy goes into uncoiling the cable and it doesn't usally recoil too much. Everyone was standing far clear of the tree and the truck and the truck did manage to pull the tree out, pretty impressive scene I might add.

I was only stating that from a Mechanical Engineer's perspective it seemed like the bracket was really under-designed. What's the word on the street about Road Armor? Good? Crap? I dunno, I just thought it seemed a little cheap...

OUTRNNR said:

What's the word on the street about Road Armor? Good? Crap? I dunno, I just thought it seemed a little cheap...

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I am speaking out of my arse but I have always assumed they were designed more for looks than function, whereas some of the other manufacturers of bumpers (ARB, TJM, Warn, etc.) really put more into function.

RE: Here's your sign

OUTRNNR said:

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In Redneck parlance, When someone does something really stupid they must have dropped their sign. The sign says STUPID!

It's from Bill Engvall. He is a comedian and the host of Country Fried Movies on the Country Music TV Station.

Bill Engvall is one of the members of the hugely successful phenomenon Blue Collar Comedy tour. He is a platinum-selling recording artist and has three DVDs certified multi-platinum. His first CD, Here's Your Sign, is one of the best-selling comedy albums of the past decade.

Re: RE: Here's your sign

KMX3060 said:

In Redneck parlance, When someone does something really stupid they must have dropped their sign. The sign says STUPID!

It's from Bill Engvall. He is a comedian and the host of Country Fried Movies on the Country Music TV Station.

Bill Engvall is one of the members of the hugely successful phenomenon Blue Collar Comedy tour. He is a platinum-selling recording artist and has three DVDs certified multi-platinum. His first CD, Here's Your Sign, is one of the best-selling comedy albums of the past decade.

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I know who Bill Engvall is, he's one of my favorite BCCT acts. I hadn't heard that phrase before though..

It wasn't stupid, just fun