RubiconJK

Hey James I saw one of your bumpers in Moab last year. The guy who had it was real nice he had lots to say about you and the bumper. (I take it he was a buddie of yours)

I have a couple ??? for you on your new bumpers,

On his bumper it made contact with the body alot (to the point the paint came off and it was dented) are the new ones going to be made that close?

How long will the wait be? He said you make everything out of your house, nothing wrong with that just wanted to know. I waited a month for my other bumpers and it was well worth it.

Also are you going to have more than one style? That seems real bulky?

Cesar

Also any designs in the works with a 2" receiver already incorporated?

RubiconJK

The front he had on his didnt have one but it looked like it could be rigged to have the tow package thing. When I looked under his Jeep he had it wired for it. It was a nice Jeep it wouldnt surprise me if he had it towed.

I would think the rear would have one. Although I saw the Jeep he had on display a couple years back and he didnt have one on then?

Expedition One

Yes, truth be told I work from home, though the bumpers aren't made in my garage or anything, If they were my garage would be huge and look something like this:



Note the giant "laser" in the back ground. I wouldn't want that power bill every month!

Nore are the bumpers/products stored hear, unless absolutely necessary. We have a warehouse where we take care of the storage and packaging needs....


OK so I'm guessing you ran into Adam: White Sahara, 2.5" OME suspension, 32"BFG MT's, still had the stock rims...? Ya that was a mistake of mine I really wish hadn't had happen, but a good learning moment. The Bumper you saw was one of the first ones we made. It was originally intended to work with a 1" body lift, but we modified that one so it would work on Adams becuase he didn't like the idea of a 1" body lift... It seamed to fit great, until he wen't offroad, thats where the damage occured. (a bit of a side not: with a body lift there was no contact between bumper and body on any of the other bumpers we made like that). Adam was really cool about the whole thing, and at that point we wen't back and redesigned the bumpers so that wouldn't happen anymore... Now every one of our bumpers is designed with body vs frame movement directly in mind. We even did it for our new FJcruiser bumpers. Unfortunelty on those it requires a kinda ugly gap between the body and bumper but Its much prefered over doing any damage to the body....


In the case of the JK there is a possiblity of contact with the fenders, but the good thing there is that there plastic, and should allow for some give, but this will all be figured out in the testing phase, before they go into production. If there is any issues the design will be adjusted...

Wait time shouldn't be much of an issue, unless there is high demand. We general are able to keep bumpers in stock, unless we are making revisions, on them, but general even at that point, there only about 1month out from being availible....

Bulky? ya, I've heard that one before on other bumpers. Do you think the stock one is bulky?....

We'll end up making a stubi version that will be smaller and shorter than this one for those that like that style.... We have ones like this for YJ's and TJ's that aren't in full release yet, but will be In a few months....

Expedition One

Lots more people are enquireing about that sort of thing. Right now we don't have anything like that, and I'm not sure we will, but we do have specialty orders availible, so, you might not be able to get one with a reciver mount in the front, but you could get one without powdercoat and have it modified to work.... There is a possiblity that our vendors that do custom work might be able to do somthing like this on a larger level also....

Or rear TJ bumpers now come with a integreated reciver but its unknown how we'll do it on the JK. Now that the rear end is totally redesigned, it might be better to allow the use of a non-integreated one....

Cesar

jfonz...I have a question about the recovery points. Are they welded on both sides of the steel? meaning on the outer and inner parts of the bumper? or just on the outer section of the steel?

Thanks

Expedition One

There welded to the outer and inner,... that is if I understand your question... If I can rephrase it a bit, your asking: Are the recover points welded to more than just the outer skin of the bumper?

If thats what you mean, then the answer is: Yes they are. We integrate/weld our recover point directly into the main mounting system of our bumper.

Cesar

that makes them really strong points then. Thanks for the response.

Sounds impressive so far.

bodiab

Just wanted to give some feedback on Expedition One bumpers. I'm a good friend of James' (the owner of Expedition One), but I can give you an honest opinion on his products given that I have owned two of his front bumpers and one rear bumper.

My first set of bumpers was on a 2004 Unlimited (this was at the EJS show in 2005); a full-width front with a "first-gen" rear bumper. The front was awesome and I like how the full-width bumper goes with factory fenders/flares. The rear looked good and worked well but was a little "bulky" on the corners....... definitely not anything like the new rear bumper / tire carrier design James has

I had also previously had an ARB bumper on a 1997 TJ, and hands down I liked everything about Expedition One's bumper...... design, approach angle, recovery points and winch mount design better than the ARB...... not to mention uniqueness.

The second bumper I bought from James was for a 2000 TJ that I have now. This time I got one of the "stubby" bumpers and it is cool. This TJ has tube fenders and the stubby looks and works awesome. I have abused this bumper and it still looks great (my brother even took on a car at 45 mph in my TJ and the bumper won...... nobody was hurt).

Now, at the sake of sounding like an infomercial for James' bumpers, these things will be well-designed and won't weigh any more than absolutely necessary. James is an engineer by trade and he knows where bumpers need heft and where they don't.

Enjoy your JK's, I'm hoping to order mine next week

Expedition One

We'll actually rather than hiding it we're most likley going to perscribe hacking it off insted. We'll make a skid plate that can be attached to the bumper to cover up the drop bar for those that would rather not deal with any cutting, but as things stand right now, the sawzall is the route were looking at.

According to 2 designers of the new JK and one of the guys in there marketing department the only purpose of that drop bracket is so the JK is legal for the Over seas market, due to pedestrian impact standards. Becuase the US doesn't currently have anything like that in place, theres no reason to keep somthing like that on your vehicle, just so it can be bent underneath by the first rock you hit


So for now thats the plan, but we still need to conferm that with some people....