I have been looking for an off road bumper for my Discovery 2. I found an ARB bumper off a wrecked 96 Jeep Grand Cherokee on Craigslist for $75.00. The measurements seem pretty close. I just hope I can straighten it out good enough. I will have to make some bumper brackets and recovery points. I will put a few pics as I go along. My plastic bumper was busted so I just pulled it off and painted the bumper support until I found

 

You can get the crash cans from ARB if you want to keep the airbags functioning properly (the cans absorb some impact to give the bags time to fully deploy) Or you can just make up some solid brackets and not worry about it. To straighten that thing out, you're going to need to mount it to something stout and start yanking on it. I know the ratchet style chain binders can develop some serious pulling power. I have used them to tweak a few things. If you know anybody in the construction or earthmoving business they would have these along with a heavy piece of equipment to tie the bumper off to.


Good luck!

 

I'm not worried about the air bags. I'm going to make a solid bracket and try to attach a recovery point to it. Thanks for the advice.

 

I have to admit that I'm curious to see how this works out.

 

I beat on the bumper for an hour after work with 2 mini sledge hammers. I got about 75 percent of the bends out. I will take a couple pics tomorrow. It got dark on me this evening. I will have to do a little welding and some work with a ball peen hammer.

 

I have an ARB bumper for the 1999 - 2002 Discovery mounted on my 2004. If you need any of the measurements I can try and get them for you. Might save you some time fitting it up.

Coating the thing with bedliner after you get it straight will save you some finish work. That stuff will hide all sorts of wrinkles and dents.

 

Thanks. Bedliner is good idea. I might do that. Did you have to make new brackets or use same ones? I emailed ARB but they wanted $250 for just the brackets.

 

It was already on the truck when I bought it, but no it bolts right up. Not too many differences between the old style and new style ARB for the Discovery. There are no openings for the driving lights on the older style bumper, and it has places for a shackle which the newer ones don't although with the crash cans using an ARB for dynamic recovery is generally considered a bad idea. I use it when I winch with a ****** block. I believe to fit the new style bumper on an older model requires a little trimming of the grill.

 

I removed the factory bumper support and lifted the bumper up just get an idea what it will look like. I am going to have to do some trimming and welding on the bumper for it to fit. The cherokee bumper sticks out farther. I am going to modify it and build some brackets then try to straighten it a little more. I am going to trim my grill off tomorrow so I can raise the bumper up where it is going to go so I can draw up some brackets.

 

Not too bad. Looks like it is a pretty good fit. It's pretty straight already too.