Illuminator

I have an arb bullbar on my xj and I'm wanting to hook a towbar to it for flat towing. I'd like to use the d-ring mounts but if not then I have a set of bolt on mounts on my CJ I can use instead. Have any of you guys used a towbar with an arb bullbar, if so how did you connect them together?

wader218

Body armor and warrior products make adaptors to pin up where your clevis mounts are. Morris 4x4 has them for a bunch of different sizes. Im looking to hook one up to my jcr bumper and stumbled upon these. Hope this helps.

cdn_xj

Note that the ARB bumper does not have D-ring mounts (actually, they're called screw-pin anchor shackles but that's not important). The spot where everyone mounts their D-rings is actually intended as an attachment /lifting point for the hi-lift lack using a special adapter.

Obviously the mounts are strong enough to support the weight of the vehicle but that is in the vertical plane. These mounts are not thick enough to deal with much other than straight forces. As soon as an angular force or side loading is applied you will likely see the mount bend.

A proper D-ring mount should be thick enough to take up ALL of the space between the ears on the d-ring.

There are 2 reasons that you see d-rings mounted there on the ARB bumper:
1) to protect that mount should you run it into a rock. The pin of the d-ring will prevent the mount from folding completely flat against the face of the bumper; and
2) people don't know any better and assume that it is, in fact, a d-ring mount.

If you want a true d-ring mount you can get a bolt-on with a backing plate or you can have fabricate and weld up a couple of mounts yourself. I would suggest that you fab longer mounting plates to reinforce the bumper mount and have those plates pass through the face of the bullbar as the foundation for the mount. Then just add plates to the side(s) of the mount to achieve the desired thickness. This way any forces applied from pulling are transfereed directly to the frame.

With that all having been said, have you checked with ARB to see if they have a towbar adapter designed to work with those points on the bullbar? That would probably save you a lot of headache and hassle.

Illuminator

Thanks for the info, I did check with arb and they don't make any adapters to mount a towbar to the bull bar. The ones at Morris 4x4 look good, not sure if they'll work with the arb. Funds are tight so I might end up putting the bolt on mounts from my CJ on instead.