hey all was looking at some aftermarket bumpers for my 92 f150, seeing as this is my daily rig and i hate bank loans to replace it, i was wondering how effective aftermarket bumpers are on these trucks. specifically i have these two questions.

1. rear bumpers, the bumper i have now is bent and rusted/broken from my mom trying to pull bushes out with it while i was gone, needless to say its an ugly pile and i am looking to replace this one first, how well do the rear bumpers from say ranch had or bronco graveyard hold up to a car smashing into them or me lightly backing into something.

2. front bumper, how well do these work? ESPECIALLY with those dinky little impact absorbing wave things on the front frame, i dont want to spend 800 on a bumper only to have the impact squiggles cave in when i hit something. anyone hit anything with a ranch hand or similar bumper on when the truck has these impact squiggles? (dont know if its just the f150 or if f250 and 350s have them as well)

 

The problem with any of these ranch hand style bumpers, is they are stronger than the frame. So if you hit something, the weakest link gives. in this case, your frame

 

I agree with what he said, damage multiplier.

 

In accidents where forces are less than frame-bending, though, they do okay. A woman in a Camry bashed into my rear Ranchhand style rear bumper at some speed while wildly backing out. No damage to the truck body, frame is still straight (had it checked at a body shop later while I was trying to figure out some weird alignment problems) and the bumper paint had a couple of scratches and some blue paint transfer. Her car? Bashed in quarter panel, destroyed taillight, sprung trunk. Well, at least that's all I saw before she hastily drove off. Yup, she hit and ran.

 

The rear frame is much stronger than the front crumple zone.

 

If you're that worried about it, why not cut off the crumple part and weld on square steel tubing or whatever to make it stronger. It's probably already stronger than the earlier frames... the crumple part is mostly double wall steel, way thicker than just plain frame horns. I've nearly stalled my 12,000 lb winch pulling on the crumple crap and it didn't make my truck any longer

Just remember that the force of an impact has to go somewhere, and if you beef up the bumper and crunchy bits of the frame, you just might eat the steering wheel in a bad wreck. Maybe not. YMMV.

 

you winch setup is custom mounted behind the factory bumper right? i have looked through so many setups

 

Yep, bolted to a 1/4" channel right thru the crumple junk. The bumper itself doesn't see any load.

 

I got rear ended with my ranch hand at over 30mph in my brothers truck. Was sitting at a red light on a really icy day. Looked in the rear view to see a guy in a fairly new Chevy with brakes locked up and sliding towards me. He immediately backed up and drove away so I'm guessing he was drunk or on something. As he drove away I saw his front bumper had a nearly perfect square hole in it from the receiver hitch and his whole front bumper was crushed. Damage was nothing more then scratches on the ranch hand and no frame damage

 

I have an F-350. *What* crumple zone???

http://www.oilburners.net/forums/sho...s-F150-vs-F350

 

Do 92-96 F250s and F350s not have crumple zone where as the f150s do?
Curious on this because I have never looked to see if the crumple zone is on our 92 F250.


I don't remember seeing one on our 87-91s but I don't think they have them.
Trav

 

Nope, they don't. They also don't have airbags. Two things they were exempted from as HD pickups - mostly because at the time, DOT found out that 500lbs of extra mass meant that occupants were as safe as if they had actually had airbags in the lighter vehicle. And the 2/350 had a lot more than 500lbs weight delta...