I got my proarmor bumper on Friday and already had the pleasure of breaking it in. I was coming off a 75' wheelie a little to fast and ran into my Scag Turf Tiger mower. The disapointing thing is that the bumper held up well but those places on both sides of the frame that the bolts for the bumper thread into bent back like putty. One is almost bent back flat which caused the bumper to push into the grill and then almost into the radiator. Fortunatly the radiator did not sustain any damage. I have been out in the garage today using GOOP trying to manufacture plastic parts to make the front plastic fit on again as well as headlight mounts......

I love my V-Force but one thing that ticks me off is that Kawi used crappy garbage metal in this frame. I will have to get with a welder this week if I am ever to get a bumper on this thing again. I have ran a Recon into a tree with no noticable damage. My freind ran my Z400 into the nerfs of my sons 300 ex at about 25 mph with no damage. I run into a mower at less than 10 mph and now I am glueing stuff up and contacting a welder.....arrr!!
Oh, and don't grab your grab bar, cuz it bends like tin foil as well!!

Oh yeah, and of course not a scratch on the Scag mower......[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-disgusted.gif[/img]

 

Well that sucks, so far my grab bar is holding up well. Atleast its replaceable. Any pictures of the damage?

 

LOL...sorry about the misfortune.

 

Hi Brent,

I posted on "My Page" the picture of the bent screw-in.

Also after some additional research and thought on the subject I decided to get the IMS bumper. It appears to protect the radiator much better than the Pro Armor and has 5 mounts instead of 3. What the heck good is a bumper that is gonna fold into the radiator when it gets hit? It defeats the whole purpose. The V has a very vunerable bumper and needs as much protection as we can give it.

So once I have the new IMS bumper (tomorrow) I am visiting a welder I know from church and we will try to get something stronger built to mount it to.

If anyone wants this Pro Armor bumper I will make you a good deal.

 

THe reason it bent is bumper design. All the bumpers that go up that high have bars that hook to the frame up by the headlights getting rid of that black plastic thing. If you hit anything with that bumper it will fold right back due to the leverage it has over the bottom mounts. With some modifications it can be made a good bumper. Looks sweet though! I'll take it off your hands if the price is right.

 

I would snap that mount off the frame and weld a box mount on. It will be much stronger.

 

Your exactly right mtecate4g, and that is why I just changed to the IMS bumper. It has 5 connectors to the frame instead of 3 like the Pro Armor. It is much lighter in weight which probably means it will bend, which I am happy about. I woud much rather have my bumper bend than frame parts!! I will PM you later.....

 

BREWSTER

I hit a tree w/ my DG front bumper off a jump...hit pretty hard. I was washing her down a couple days ago and noticed that the bumper looked awfully close to the plastic grill (like touching it). I looked at the mouting tabs you described and the paint was chipped and they were slightly bent. Guess I'll have to fix it now....don't like the idea of losing it all together...but I want to keep my bumper.

 

Humm,

Sounds like this could be a MOD in the making. It's very simple to take the existing frame mount and box weld it for more strength.

If your wondering what I mean by "box weld". If you look at the mount, it's basically a piece of flat iron bent into the shape of a "U" and has the nut welded into it. Simply take (2) pieces of flat iron and weld them to the top and bottom of the mount, creating a box. This will greatly increase the strength of the mount. Even a single piece on top would help keep it from bending from side to side as the pictures indicate.

Ideally someone with a TIG welder would make the best looking weld but I use a MIG and it does great.

Do the welds and then color match the paint back to new and your done.

 

Same here!! I tried to jump a beaver dam , JUST missed, did an over the bar and pushed back the left mount. Was able to "coax" it back with a pry bar and a 10 poound hammer. I put a DG Pro bumper on . At least it looks tougher. I had issues with the stupid welded nuts popping off when I installed the PRM 6 Pac Rack. REAL pain because they are hidden inside a hollow tube