I didn’t care for the aesthetics of the Rock Hard winch plate – the plate itself is fine, I just didn’t like how it put the winch up in front of the grille, blocking airflow and the iconic grill design. Thanks to a sale and mail-in rebate I added a Rugged Ridge Venator full width bumper.
Originally I wanted to purchase the Mopar Steel Rubicon bumper, but to get the bumper, winch plate, skid plate and all the necessary bits and pieces the cost would be north of $2,300!
This bumper checks pretty much everything I wanted out of a bumper. I really like the winch down lower between the frame rails as opposed to at or just below the upper lip of the bumper. In addition, the winch plate is mounted to 6 different points on the frame.
I did have to use the spacers that were included for use with Warn Xeon winches on my Smittybilt X20 10,000lb winch. When I mounted the winch without them the back of the winch control box was pushing slightly against the grille. By adding the spacers I have a little bit of clearance – although if I need to remove the grille I will need to either remove the winch control box or unbolt the winch itself to slide it forward to allow for clearance. On the Jeeps to change out the headlights or even just the halogen bulbs you do need to remove the front grille.
On most of the aftermarket bumpers I looked at the winch plate was integral with the bumper itself, welded to the inside of the front face of the bumper itself, with the rear not supported at all. Under heavy winching I envisioned that the plate could twist up at the back due to lack of support.
Also, this bumper offers a few options. You can add a bull bar, but I didn’t like how tall it sat, nor did it have a provision for a 20-inch light bar within it. Had it sat a bit lower and had the light provision I would have added that. They also offer “stubby” end caps that allow you to remove the wings just outside the fog lamps (although a bit pricey).
Speaking of fog lamps, this bumper accommodates the factory sport halogen fog lights, which was something else that was important to me.
And finally, the lower portion of the bumper also acts as a skid plate (although I wish it was a little thicker).
While this bumper is not perfect, it is pretty darn close and at almost one-fourth the cost (before the $100 mail-in rebate), it was a no-brainer.