A1R Bumper Options

[GCecchetto]

Curious if anyone else with an A1R has addressed the incredibly cheesy front bumper? For a truck with almost 20,000 curb weight, the bumper is ridiculous, and let's not even talk about the fiberglass skid plat that is the protection for my AC condenser and radiator. I've been told the A0 bumper are much better, but have heard conflicting info as to whether or not they fit an A1R. The winch bumpers from MWME are 3/16 steel plate, but I have a factory winch, so I don't need the winch mount, and those bumpers don't have the cutout to accommodate the cable fairlead for the factory winch.

The guy I bought my truck from scanned the A1R skid plate and has a CAD file of it. I plan to have a metal shop we work with that has laser cutters make me one out of 1/4" stainless steel.

 

[GeneralDisorder]

Interesting. My skid plate (gravel/dirt/mud/water deflector as referred to in various TM and Fed-Log listings) is steel and quite heavy.

I find some references in PS magazine to the HIMARS getting swapped over to a composite unit. I'm told some trucks have the plastic/fiberglass skid plates. Not sure what models/years got what and why. There are two NSN's listed and I think the second one is the plastic one. Unfortunately the system doesn't really say and says both of them are "composite" but that could refer to anything - the "steel" one is a "composition" of expanded metal and steel plate while the plastic one is a "composition" of glass fiber, resin and mesh.... so it's not really clean on which is which. Although the 9460 HIMARS unit is definitely plastic and cost over $1k acquisition cost. The 8667 is only about $400 acquisition cost.

5340-01-567-8667
2530-01-524-9460

You can likely find a steel one if you look around and make some calls. The steel unit is heavy and I bashed mine into a stump pretty hard and all it did was rub off some paint.

 

[serpico760]

Interesting. My skid plate (gravel/dirt/mud/water deflector as referred to in various TM and Fed-Log listings) is steel and quite heavy.

I find some references in PS magazine to the HIMARS getting swapped over to a composite unit. I'm told some trucks have the plastic/fiberglass skid plates. Not sure what models/years got what and why. There are two NSN's listed and I think the second one is the plastic one. Unfortunately the system doesn't really say and says both of them are "composite" but that could refer to anything - the "steel" one is a "composition" of expanded metal and steel plate while the plastic one is a "composition" of glass fiber, resin and mesh.... so it's not really clean on which is which. Although the 9460 HIMARS unit is definitely plastic and cost over $1k acquisition cost. The 8667 is only about $400 acquisition cost.
.

5340-01-567-8667
2530-01-524-9460

You can likely find a steel one if you look around and make some calls. The steel unit is heavy and I bashed mine into a stump pretty hard and all it did was rub off some paint.

I'm pretty sure I've seen it A0-A1 bumper for sale recently on the interwebs or the bay... Might have even seen that skid plate as well

 

[Third From Texas]

My 2 cents.....

Mine is an A1R with the new bumper. The original had been snagged on something while backing up (as is so often the case) but a NOS A1R bumper was in the back of the truck. And I've owned A0 trucks as well, and pulled a bumper on one of those as well So I've handled both bumpers.

I'm not sure why BAE chose to re-design the front bumper. The changes appear to mostly revolve around the front frame tow points. Now I don't recall ever having any issue with the front shackles on my A0's. And I've towed an A0 before using the correct towbar. I don't recall any clearance issues at all. So I can't really see why a change was needed or made. I do suspect that if you weighed them side-by-side, the A0 bumper would be heavier, but not sure there.

But the new design is ass, IMO. The re-design created weak points that didn't exist in the original. First, apparently to save weight they removed the center portion of the the lower bumper (and extended the skidplate up from below to fill the new void). This segmented a bumper that was already prone to getting bent (in situations it likely should have been doing the bending ). If structurally that wasn't bad enough, they did the the same thing to the center section of the bumper where they removed material around the shackle/tow points. In an effort that appears to have been made so you could supposedly slip the shackle pin into place more easily, they cut out the side of the boxed section of the bumper (around the shackle).

TLDR: the A1R bumper is structurally inferior to the A0 because they basically cut a massive section out of the low/center and then weakened it further with the addition of several new cutout sections

Side note: My truck is an '08 and came with the fiberglass skid plate (same molded plastic material as the battery box top). Had that thing off for repairs as well (came with a crack and a corner section missing that I rebuilt). I think BAE gave these a shot to help bring the already hopelessly nose-heavy these trucks were becoming
Pros: they are repairable and one person can easily remove/reinstall it.
Cons: it's a friggin' skid plate. It's not steel or even aluminum. It protects nothing beyond being a bug and pebble guard.

 

[GeneralDisorder]

Side note: My truck is an '08 and came with the fiberglass skid plate (same molded plastic material as the battery box top). Had that thing off for repairs as well (came with a crack and a corner section missing that I rebuilt). I think BAE gave these a shot to help bring the already hopelessly nose-heavy these trucks were becoming
Pros: they are repairable and one person can easily remove/reinstall it.
Cons: it's a friggin' skid plate. It's not steel or even aluminum. It protects nothing beyond being a bug and pebble guard.

Interesting! I think that's THE FIRST difference we have found between our trucks eh Third? I don't have any evidence one way or the other on mine being original or not. Mine was missing the bolt through the skid plate and the cab lift mount but that only means the skid plate was removed at some point.

 

[Third From Texas]

Interesting! I think that's THE FIRST difference we have found between our trucks eh Third? I don't have any evidence one way or the other on mine being original or not. Mine was missing the bolt through the skid plate and the cab lift mount but that only means the skid plate was removed at some point.

There's also an aluminum version of the plate.

I came really close to buying one once. But I figured it would still take damage and wasn't nearly as easy to repair.

I'd love to make a steel one someday. I think bolting up the steel version would somewhat strengthen the bumper as a whole (but having fiberglass bolted on there is structurally a joke). But I'm just as tempted to swap to an A0 bumper and go that direction.

If money were no object, I'd have a totally custom bumper made. Something far more beefy than either OEM bumper.

 

[Third From Texas]

I've had this discussion before, LOL.

I knew I scribbled on an image in the past. Surprised I still had it.

 

[Third From Texas]

A0 bumper for reference

 

[serpico760]

There's also an aluminum version of the plate.

I came really close to buying one once. But I figured it would still take damage and wasn't nearly as easy to repair.

I'd love to make a steel one someday. I think bolting up the steel version would somewhat strengthen the bumper as a whole (but having fiberglass bolted on there is structurally a joke). But I'm just as tempted to swap to an A0 bumper and go that direction.

If money were no object, I'd have a totally custom bumper made. Something far more beefy than either OEM bumper.

Check out the bumper that Excap uses

Willkommen bei EXCAP, den Spezialisten für Expeditionsfahrzeuge - EXCAP

excap.de

 

[GeneralDisorder]

There's also an aluminum version of the plate.

I came really close to buying one once. But I figured it would still take damage and wasn't nearly as easy to repair.

I'd love to make a steel one someday. I think bolting up the steel version would somewhat strengthen the bumper as a whole (but having fiberglass bolted on there is structurally a joke). But I'm just as tempted to swap to an A0 bumper and go that direction.

If money were no object, I'd have a totally custom bumper made. Something far more beefy than either OEM bumper.

Interesting - so your truck is in the 119k range serial and mine in the 117k range. My truck was built 05/08 and yours was built 10/08. The NIIN for the 8667 composite skid plate was issued on 10/09/2008 so the same month your truck was built...... missed the steel skid plate by just a handful of days probably

 

[GCecchetto]

Interesting - so your truck is in the 119k range serial and mine in the 117k range. My truck was built 05/08 and yours was built 10/08. The NIIN for the 8667 composite skid plate was issued on 10/09/2008 so the same month your truck was built...... missed the steel skid plate by just a handful of days probably

My truck is also 119K built 10/08 and has the composite bug catcher, that's about all it's good for anyway