Reviews for Carnivore Front Bumper for 07-24 Jeep Wrangler JK, JL & Gladiator JT
Its new and that fact that not too many other JT's have it will make my rig look unique.
AGGRESSIVE LOOK AND FEEL
Great bumper, and I love how it looks. Good features. Easy to install if you are lucky, but I never am so here are a few installation tips.
The fog lights are close together, and the front holes in the winch floor plate go through where the fog lights are. So you cannot install a winch with fog lights in place. Plan ahead if you already have a winch. If you install the winch before putting the bumper on, it will be even heavier. If you put the bumper on before the winch, you need to make sure you will have enough access room to put in the fog lights.
The pre-threaded screw holes have little tolerance. It was hard to get the small screws in to mount the fog lights. The screws bind easily, and are prone to jam. Only use a hand tool and not a power tool, or the heads of the weak screws will snap right off. This happened to me, and I dread trying to reverse this whenever I get a winch or different fog lights. The bumper will have to come off.
To mount the bumper, you have to line up 4 pairs of bolts on the bumper with 8 holes on the Jeep frame. Some of them have a little built in play in terms of position (which is good), and they provide flat plastic bolt retainers to prevent the bolts from falling back into the bumper framework. If you are lucky the bolts will all line up the first time. I had to do multiple attempts which is not fun with such a heavy bumper. If the bolts do not line up when you push on the bumper, the bolts will get pushed back despite the retainers and you have to start all over. My final success was to try and line up the outside 4 bolts first. There is a hole in the framework just above the inner bolts, and putting something thick like a socket wrench handle through them can keep the inner bolts from being pushed back.
DO NOT attempt to put this bumper on by yourself. You need at least two people, but three is even better. Take some measurements before attempting and have something of the right height like jack stands under the bumper to set it on when installing.
If your state requires a front license plate, you may have a challenge. If you already have a winch, there are many plate brackets that clip on to the rollers of the fairlead. If you don’t, you’ll need to be creative. The fog lights are closer together than the width of a license plate, so you can’t put a plate between them. This means the plate has to sit high and stick above the top surface of the bumper, which to me is not a great appearance. I ended up getting a thick plastic license backer plate and drilling bolt holes in it to put bolts through the two fairlead holes in the bumper.
I absolutely love this bumper, it looks great, the build quality is great, BUT, the factory fog lights that I have in my 2020 JL Willy's do not fit correctly. I was able to get them in alright, but it was a pain in the a** to get them in and there's a lot of stress on the plastic housing of the lights. I'm curious to see how well they hold up as it gets colder. I think it was a very poor choice to use 2mm hex bolts as the mounting screw of choice here. They're very difficult to work with in such a tight space, I really wish they were star-bit bolts so I could at least use a small ratcheting socket wrench. And on top of that, I didn't realize that you can't get winch bolts through the front holes with the lights in place until AFTER I installed them. That was fun.
All in all, I would buy this again, but those fog light mounts easily added an extra hour to the project.
Looks good, well built, very heavy.
Installation was not bad, doable by yourself but really need 2 people. The glaring issue is the fog light placement.
I have no idea how they expect you to get a bolt in from the bottom when installing a winch, much less a torque wrench.
The front winch mounting holes are right where the fog light housing is, resulting in no room to work with.
Going to go get a winch tomorrow and give it a try but pretty disappointing.
Hopefully there’s something I’m overlooking and it goes smoother than expected.
The rear holes are wide open. No issue there.
Love how this looks! The ability to add the flood lights was a huge plus especially when driving down dark mountain roads. Arrived slightly damaged but nothing noticeable… Fits my Quadratec 12,000 lbs q-stealth synthetic winch perfectly as well including a 20 Hella LED light bar which is…well Hella Good:)
A bit pricy for the quality. Received the bumper quickly but the box was damaged and thus the corners of the bumper were damaged as well, so I'll need to paint it so it doesn't rust. Poor welding and some leftover adhesive on both the bar and bumper. Contacted quadratec and they refunded me $125 but probably won't buy from them again due to poor quality control. There are a lof of other bumpers, made in the USA, that come in around the same price that are of much better quality.