*REVIEW* Artec Industries Venture Bumper
 

If anyone is looking into the Artec Industries front bumper, here is my honest review from the initial order up to the installation.

Backstory on why I chose this bumper: I went back and forth between ordering from C4, SSO, and Victory4x4. What sold me mainly on the Artec bumper was the added bonus of free A-arm skids and the "1 week" turn around time. Overall fit and finish of the bumper looked pretty good to me as well. Total out the door after tax and shipping was $830.44

Communication: 3/10
Communication and customer satisfaction is a big deal for me. I always said I would support companies that actually take the time to respond to their customers. This was not the case here. Seeing how active they were on social media platforms, I sent them multiple messages regarding my order as well as some issues I had upon receiving my order. Messages either took 1-2 weeks for a response or being left on read/seen with no response at all. I did also make 1 phone call and 2 separate messages to them inquiring about the turn around time on the Venture bumpers. I was given 3 different responses (These are in stock - these are typically a couple of days out - turn around time is 1 week).

Shipping: 2/10
I understand these are shipped UPS Ground and not freight strapped to a pallet, but holy hell they need to work on their packaging. They basically threw the bumper in a thin cardboard box and filled the empty spaces with packing paper. I would have at least wrapped the bumper in shrink wrap and double walled cardboard. My box showed up pretty beat up from UPS with 2 holes in it.

Turnaround: 8/10
Order was placed 4/24/2019 and the bumper was on my doorstep 5/14/2019. Totaling just shy of 3 weeks, which is pretty good, but it would be nice if they listed this on their website instead of telling potential customers "We normally keep these in stock"

Fit and Finish: 6/10
Upon receiving the bumper, I noticed quite a bit of weld splatter. No big deal, I was able to sand most of it down with my air grinder. Although I believe that's something that should have been noticed and taken care of by QA prior to shipping. Upon further inspection, I noticed the "hook" tabs were facing the wrong direction :doh: nothing a pair of pliers couldnt fixed. No big deal right? BUT wait! Theres more. I cant find the exact post where they stated it fits a Rigid 30" bar, but it doesnt. I had to fab up some simple brackets to mount the bar in place..no big deal I guess. Now onto the winch! For the most part, the winch fit but I did have to bend the vertical bar on my core support.

Now comes the part to install the bumper onto the car. Only 3 of the 4 holes lined up correctly on each side. :censored: Once I got everything on and buttoned up, I noticed the bumper was shifted a lot more towards the passenger side and not perfectly center. Pulled everything off and shifted the bumper as much as I could to the driver side. Still not center... :mad: Top of the bumper also sits pretty far in, borderline pushing up against the center mesh grille. Sides of the bumper sit right on the bumper itself and I expect paint to rub off over time. Eventually I will have to pull everything back off again in the future and widen/oval out the mounting holes and see if I can get it aligned better.

Final Thoughts:
If I were to do this all over again, I would probably go with 1 of the 3 other companies above. Overall, it was a lot more work than I anticipated and garbage communication/customer service. Maybe the bumper I received was the bad one of the bunch, but it was wayyyyyyy too much of a headache and extra work for subpar fitment. I began questioning if these bumpers are manufactured in house or if they outsource them. When I inquired about the lead time over the phone, they told me that they were waiting for the next shipment of bumpers to arrive. :spider:

More pics. Check out the 3rd picture.

You can see that the bumper still sits more towards the passenger side. The mounting holes under the bumper also don't line up with the holes of the venture bumper on the passenger side as it does on the driver side. If I try pulling and flexing the bumper to line up the hole, then the bumper pops out of the mounting bracket along the fender.

good review.

Companies these days are too busy catering to their brand ambassadors and the media buzz they create vs actually running a honest business.

Sorry to hear about your poor experience. Artec always striked me as a mass produced cookie cutter brand. Apparently they sell a lot of Jeep products to 4WP and other online retailers. From their Youtube videos to their IG stream they just seemed a little high production, mass produced to me. I guess it shows in the quality of their product. They certainly tried to make their presence felt at OEW but I just walked on pass their booth.

I'm shocked to see how poor the fitment is, considering how highly they market it. This sucks that you've had to deal with this. Thanks for sharing your experience, and I hope you can get it aligned properly with minimal modification/hacking.

I guess I should have expected this from them.

I figured it was a newly designed product, on a completely new platform for them, so the first batch of orders cant be that horrible. Guess I was wrong :cry2:

thanks for the write up, that knocks one possibility off the board for me... Side note, what's your speaker hooked to? :P

Glad I could help!

Speaker is for my PA system! Nice feature to have on the trails or when someone on the road wants to drive like an a-hole :laugh:

Thanks for the honest review. This has definitely swayed me back to C4, as I was on the fence between the two. After talking to the guys from Artec at Expo West, and hearing their pitch about it being the best fitting, I was certain this was the bumper I was looking for. Guess I was wrong.

I plan on playing with the bumper some more tonight or tomorrow. I'm pretty certain I can get it to fit a bit better after I extend the holes out but if you're in the market for a bumper that is ready to go out the box with next to near perfect fitment, this may not be the one for you.

I'm at the age where I dont want to spend the whole day making adjustments to a product to get it to fit the way it was advertised, when it should have been all squared away and ready to go from the provider. Paired that with the bad communication is what made this whole ordeal a nightmare and more of a headache than it should be for me.

Were you able to get it to line up better? I actually like the look of the Venture bumper and just ordered the same one. We'll see if I run into any of the same issues upon install.

I don't want to rub salt in open wounds but everything about my experience with C4 was fantastic. I would definitely buy from them again.
Hope that helps.

thank you for sharing your experience. it shocked me, because I just received my Artec bumper. I bought it from 4WP, having a shorter lead time(a week), but no free lower control arm armor.

The first one I got was found had a out of shape screw hole on the wing plate of the bumper as picture 1 showed. 4WP helped me change one.

The second one seems has the correct hook position(as pic 2 showed), and the 6 mounting screw holes are even distanced from the central logo according to a rough measure. But I still concern about the fitting now. I will take out the factory bumper and try the fitting before paint it.
https://www.toyota-4runner.org/membe...screw-hole.jpg
https://www.toyota-4runner.org/membe...55685-hook.jpg

We thank you for bringing these issues to our attention. We pride ourselves on delivering a great product and having an even better customer customer experience, but it looks like we have not hit those marks here.

Our goal is not to be perfect, but to handle and address issues to ensure customer satisfaction and there are no excuses for any of the issues that you experienced.

I will be reaching out to you Bryant to ensure that we get you a replacement bumper and that any issues are resolved.

As in terms the communication, we have a number or ways to reach us, best is through our website "Contact Us" page or direct email to [email protected]. While we are active on Social Media that is typically handled by the marketing team and not directly by the customer support team.

We are a small company and though we seem to have a big footprint, we still take all of these factors and make sure it gets pushed out to every department to ensure that all staff areas understand that their job 100% contributes to our goal of complete customer satisfaction.


I do apologize for the delay in responding here, but this thread was just brought to my attention on Sunday and I wanted to make sure our account was properly set up to ensure we could properly respond.

If any of you should have any questions on this product or have a fitment or support issue that does not get resolved to your satisfaction, please reach out to me directly, my information is below.


Thank you.

Armando Verdugo
Director of Sales
Artec Industries
[email protected]
Main 855-278-3299 ext. 805
Mobile 480-290-5993

I haven’t posted a follow up to my install because I have been experiencing the same issues as everyone else. I had to cut and modify the hood latch bar in order to mount the bumper with a smittybilt 10k synthetic rope winch. No big deal, but I did some damage to my plastic bumper in the process even with masking tape applied. The hooks on the top of the steel bumper are too high for them to mount and align with the holes in the factory frame rails. I had to use a jack to prop the steel bumper in order to get the bolts back in. Once installed, the steel bumper sits too far into the plastic bumper and lower grille. I tried every adjustment and could not get it right. I could live with how close it sits because it looks like a factory snug fit, but it’s pushing so hard the bumper is popping out by the passenger headlight. I called Artec today and talked to Tom who then asked me to forward photos and an explanation of my issues and they would be getting back to me. From what I can see the easiest remedy would be to create a 1/16 - 1/8 spacer between the frame rail and the Artec bumper. I’ve already repainted my bumper once, and it looks like I will have to do it again. I will post an update once I hear back from them.