I bounced into an ARB front bumper on the super cheap. There are some things I'm not enjoying about the design (winch mounting primarily) but I'm going to run it for a while.



I do have a couple of questions that I haven't found answers for.



1 - can you cut the insanely large roller fairlead mount off without harming the strength of the bumper. I've read one post from 20 years ago that said it was "structural". It has three small tabs that penetrate the front bumper but the rest is surface welded on. I'm going to run a hawse/synthetic line and that roller mount is huge.



2 - I've read at least one person that says they got a 9.5xp to fit. It's about .5" too long so you would need to hog out part of the inner support. Anyone done it? Pictures? I would much prefer to get the 9.5xp as it has the larger more powerful motor then the xd9 and pulls incredibly hard and fast, and it only $100 more then the XD9.



Thanks

 

I've had several of these and each had various mods done.

First off, what mounting style is your ARB?
does it mount directly to the unibody or does it use adapting brackets and "shim plate" to mount up.

I'll try and dig up a few pictures as the examples but I have deleted the front fairlead support plate on 2 of these wihtout any issues structurally. No hesiation there especially if your leaning towards setting up a hawse vs a roller fairlead.

I can't speak to winch fitment on the grounds of clearances the side brackets. i have though had one of these bumpers setup with a warn 8274 poking through the top without issues. That involved cutting a large section of the center boxed portion but again - no issues with strength

 

Roller fairlead support deleted for hawse

With warn 8274

Then without warn 8274

Center bar deleted for xrc winch control box

 

Great pictures - thank you. Mine is the 97 and later bumper and it looks like it mounts directly to the existing bumper bolt holes on the unibody. I haven't tried to install it yet, and while I did download the instructions, I haven't really dug into them.

Thanks for confirming that I can cut that thing off.