My first post. I've got 2000 miles on my 2013 JKU and somebody pulled out in front of me. The corner of the factory bumper took the entire impact and the bumper is now trashed. It bent back towards the front tire, but I still have about a half inch of clearance. My question is what do you think the damage would have been if I'd been running a stubby bumper and the impact was on the leading edge of the tire?

 

How fast were you going I can see the tire taking the entire impact and breaking evrything that holds in on and maybe the axle.

 

Maybe 10 - 15 mph at impact.

 

Damage would of been pretty much the same in this particular accident in the photo. The ends of the stock bumper don't do anything they are just plastic.

Edit: You may have bent the very tip of the metal underlay that's more towards the center but I still feel that it wouldnt have matter too much.

 

Here is a pic after I slid on ice at about the same speed while wheeling for comparison. I slid into another Jeeps Shrockworks bumper corner. No damage at all to his rig. I run a Jeepswag stubby.

 

It's why I went with a full width:

 

Yeah, I really like the look of the stubbies, but this has me thinking that maybe that's not the way to go ...

 

With a stubby you would've had no protection in that angle of a hit obviously and your tire would've taken the hit and if hit hard enough you could've bent any or all of the suspension including the axle, control arms, sway bar, steering etc. I've seen it happen before and it doesn't take much to bend one thing and throw out your entire alignment and have problems down the road if not fixed properly. That being said stubby bumpers look way better on JKs and are better off road. We cut down the stock bumper and added caps to it so it's a mid-length bumper, if we call a stubby just the width of the frame rails. Has worked out much better off road for us offering more clearance on obstacles, but it's not for everyone.

 

This kind of highlights the debate about what looks/works great off-road (Stingers and Stubbies) can be dangerous on "normal" daily driving. Full-width bumpers push things aside, distribute impacts over a greater area. The damage done to pedestrians, motor cycles, cars would be much greater with a stubby that leaves the rotating tires exposed as grinders. Like wise stingers that extend forward at window height at act as battering rams.It might be seen as an unequal contest between smaller, lower, lighter cars ("fuel efficient") and the hulking 4X4 demon offroaders.Get in a Honda Civic or Ford Focus and eyeball that lifted, stubbied, and stingered JK from the impact point of view.This will probably become an issue in the not-so-distant future of liability driven legislation. Just my two cents.

 

You could have just driven over the hood with a stubby, right? You didn't have enough approach angle with the bumper there.