drhines

I have a diesel pusher motor home and I wanted to pull my new 09 Jeep Rubicon. Normally this is no problem with a stock Rubicon but if you want to install a winch bumper and winch you can run into some problems and decisions you must make. I was looking for a winch bumper that I could install my Roadmaster Falcon tow bar too. Roadmaster makes a bracket that will work with the Mopar winch bumper but then your brackets are mounted down low under the bumper where I was afraid they would get in the way of some serious rock crawling and besides it cost about $350 for the bracket mounts plus another $550 or so for the Mopar winch bumper. I found that excessive.

I was also looking for a bumper that did not have the OEM crash cans up front so I could make a tow bracket and use the 4 bolts to the front frame to mount a bracket for towing. Therefore with the help of a forum member who had done something similar, I chose the Rugged Ridge Bumper. The Rugged Ridge bumper comes with a plate on the front of the bumper that uses 4 bolts to mount the included D-rings brackets and bumper to the frame.

So my solution was to use the Rugged Ridge D-Ring plate as a template and I had a shop make another plate with identical size and bolt holts. Below is picture of the included D-Ring bracket plate that came with the bumper.



I ordered from Roadmaster a set of brackets to weld onto the front of the plate the shop made. Looking back I should have just made some brackets as Roadmaster charged me $87 for these brackets. I also could have cut the brackets off my old tow brackets. Below is a picture of the plate the shop made with the Roadmaster bracket attached. The plus to the Rugged Ridge bumper is that it comes with the D-Rings. You can attach these D-Rings to this modified Bracket for an excellent recovery point when off-roading.




This pic is a closeup of the modified plate with towbar attached.




The only problem I ran into was that the safety tabs that you run the safety pins through when attaching to tow bar were to close to attach the D-Rings. Just took a weld cutter and cut the weld, moved the tabs up higher on the bracket. You have to play around with it before welding so that the D-rings and the tow bar pins both will fit but no problem. Below is a picture of the Roadmaster Towbar attached to bumper ready to be pulled by RV.



The next picture is what the finished product looks like with the winch bumper, aux lights, and D-Rings on ready to go off-roading. Only takes about 1 minute to put the D-Rings on.



One drawback to the Rugged Ridge winch bumper is that there is no provision made for aux lights to be mounted. The only location that you have room to mount the lights is right in front of the turn signal and the 6" lights hide the turn signals which I figured would not be safe. I had the same shop weld me some light mounting tabs on top of the hoop. I have a separate write-up in this section for installing IPF lights on Rugged Ridge Bumper.

In total I spent the following for this hookup but could be done cheaper.
Rugged Ridge winch bumper with end extensions and hoop - $542
Roadmaster Brackets to weld to plate - $87
Shop welding and fabricating plate - $60
Powdercoating plate and bracket - $20

Doug Hines
Benton, AR
09 Rubicon

meljr

That is quite impressive and looks well done. I have the Currie skid plate with tow bar mounts, but I have yet to do much more with it past the basic installation. Nice writeup and great pictures!

-meljr

CIJeep

You could do the same to an ARB front bumper if you left off the crush cans and put the D-ring tabs on there.

Nice setup you did, and cost a lot less than mine since I had square tubing done lower yet high enough to not have any ground clearance problems.

These Jeeps tow real nice!

bigbluejk

renegadelt1 has exactly the same set up. he used it to push his motor home from florida to arkansas a couple months ago. Looks great drhines. Good work.

drhines

renegadelt1 was the forum member that gave me the idea. He is a wealth of information when it comes to Jeep's.

Doug Hines
Benton, AR

The Jeep

That looks great! I am about to mount the mopar bumper and winch that I have sitting in the garage. I also have the roadmaster brackets for the mopar off road bumper sitting in the box still. I think I am going to send them back and take my old brackets to the local welding shop and have them make a set for me. I wanted to do something like this but I was worried if it would work. Also if it would be safe and strong enough to tow the Jeep. But after seeing your pictures I thought about it and realized that the way you have it set up is stronger than the way roadmaster brackets mount to the Jeep. Thanks for posting the info and pics.

renegadelt1

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IMO This setup is much better than any base plate that is offered aftermarket, I am helping a friend with that is using Mopar off road bumper to do the same set up, So far we have removed the crush can covers and cut the crush cans from the bumper, next we will be adding the tow brackets.
Here’s a picture of my setup using the RR bumper.

JackMac4

Just outta curiosity, for those of you with class A's, are they not capable of trailer towing?

Every now and then I look at those despite the fact I can never afford one, but what I really want is something I can trailer tow my Jeep and sleep comfortably.

Bert338

Nice job, here is my set up. Not as pretty but it has worked on three jeeps. The other jeeps used the tow points on the bumper as D shackle point. Didn't think about it with this bumper.

Bert338

It depends on what type of motor home you have or get. Most Class C m/h's have a max tow rate of 3000 to 3500 lbs. A Class A gas m/h may have a max tow rate of 5000 lbs, where a Class A diesel has a max tow rate of 10,000 lbs.
So if you have a Class A m/h gasser and you have a Unlimited you are getting close to the max. Now add a trailer big enough to haul your JK now your way over your limit. Same if you have a 2 door Jk and you want to trailer it with a Class C m/h.
The best way is to flat tow it or tow 4 down as they say. I have been towing 4 down behind m/h's for 15 years, it easy.