Installing Iceland Offroad Bumper/Flares - WJ

Well, I finally installed the bumper today, and thought I would post up pics of the progress. I met Emil at Iceland Offroad (www.icelandoffroad.com) a few weeks back. He is from Utah, so I was able to meet him when I picked up my bumper and flares. The bumper is done, and I will continue with the flares as I get them on.

I was very impressed with the quality of the stuff I got from him. The flares and bumer are about a 1/4 inch thick , the bumper a little bit more. And they are VERY light and strong. I decided to go this route because the bumper doesn't weigh a ton like the ARB I was looking at. It comes with a winch cradle, so I can cut the bumper later and add a winch as the cradle is already in place.

I can paint them to match the Jeep, so it will have a very clean but updated look. Even if bushwacker made flares for the WJ, I don't think I would buy them. The Iceland flares will take more work to install, but are much higher quality and are even less expensive. I have seen way too many people tear/crack, wrinkle a bushwacker flare. Check out the video on his site of the Cherokee driving up onto this fender flare.

Iceland Offroad had a ton of JK/ZJ/WJ etc stuff that he was getting ready to send out.

Here you can see the bolts. If you look at the inside, the fiberglass is marine quality, just like your looking at the inside of a boat.

Brackets that sandwich the frame, and the winch cradle. I have the non winch bumper, but the rear is already marked and it can easily be cut to run a winch in the future. The cradle will sit under the bumper as the d-ring mounts tie into it. The cradle will be ready to go when it comes time for a winch. The winch bumpers come with an aluminum fairlead, it is designed for the nylon style ropes.

With everything prepped, it was install day. I started by removing the bumper. To get it off, there are two 10mm bolts just in front of the front tires that hold the bumper to the fender. There are clips that hold the bottom of the bumper to the radiator support. You have to disconnect the fog lights if you have them (I had previously removed mine b/c I had to cut the bumper as I was rubbing pretty bad. On my 99, the bumper and the grill are one piece. So I removed all of the phillips head screws that secure the grill to the headlight/grill panel. Then the bumper just comes off.

Here is the hardware for the bumper. The only factory bolts you re-use are the sway bar bolts. Other than that, each side has 4 bolts that bolt the upper and lower brackets together sandwiching the frame. 6 more bolts, 3 per side, hold the winch cradle to the upper bracket. The four shorter bolts hold the bottom of the winch cradle to the bottom bracket. The four stainless allen head bolts hold the d-ring mounts to the front of the bumper and winch cradle. there are four other self tapping bolts, I think they are meant to hold the bumper to the fender. I didn't use them though, maybe after I paint. The only hardware re-used were the four sway bar bolts, two per side.

One side of the bracket is done. Leave all the bolts very loose until everything is threaded in. The tolerances are very tight, but perfect. I used a phillips head screwdriver as a centering pin to get the holes to line up as I inserted some of the bolts. Once everything is in place, I tightened things up back to front. I started with the sway bar bolts and moved forward.

Winch cradle in place.
The winch cradle attaches with three bolts to the upper bracket seen here, and with two bolts to the lower bracket from below seen in the next pic down.

The upper and lower brackets tie into the frame and each other, and the winch cradle ties into both upper and lower brackets. This design keeps everything tied together well. The design is very strong and well thought out.

This is a bottom shot that shows all of the bolts holding everything together:

Here is the final product. The bumper is just primed, so it doesn't quite match yet. With just four bolts holding it on, it will be easy to remove and paint and re-install. The right side needs to come up about 1/2 inch. If I can't adjust it up enough, I will just oblong the holes behind the d-rings in the bumper which will allow me to pull the fiberglass up to close the gap between the bumper and the fender. I will also paint the visible section of the grill/headlight panel white so that it is less visible.