Slee 200 Series Front Bumper - Release (1 Viewer)

[use2bn83]

What size meats are those?

295/70R18 if memory serves. I loved that truck, it was just dialed. Minus the chineesium Tesla screen thing haha. Amory and I have some fond memories of trying to turn the heat up and the stereo volume going up with it

 

[unclemat]

Different styles of mounting that accomplish what they need to in order manage the loads placed on them. I’ve loaded both the Slee bumper to ~11k pounds of winch load and the ARB to 9600lbs of winch load.

A couple of notes… I stopped at ~9600 pounds of load on the ARB because it was deflecting so bad I was worried I was going to do permanent damage.

The Slee bumper was starting to deflect at ~11k, but after so many pulls, the electrical system was starting to freak out if I recall, or maybe we ran out of linked vehicles to drag. Christo has the numbers somewhere, I want to say it was 10,900 and change.

One key feature that is probably overlooked between the two is the rigidity of the winch cradle/bumper mounting brackets. It was designed to really not deflect much at all at a 2x safety factor of the loads produced by a 12k lb winch. This distributes the loads to both frame horns better than the ARB in my opinion.. and in testing.


They are both great bumpers (I admit I’m a bit biased) There are 2 big considerations…

The ARB bracketry is designed to give way in an accident, the slee bracketry is not. The slee bracketry is so rigid that if someone put a large capacity winch (like a 14.5k) they could do catastrophic damage to the frame. On an ARB you’d likely ruin the bumper or break the winch before ruining the frame… maybe, but it would definitely pretzel more before destroying the frame haha.

Anyhow, you really can’t go wrong with either. They are really designed for different purposes.

That’s the extent of my memory from 4-5 years ago haha and I wouldn’t get too wrapped around the axle about the through bolt.

Good info. Actually winching may not be what is stressing the horns the most, but vibrations from corrugated roads. Common down under.

I want to think Slee knows what they are doing, though the clevis/rod would give me a warm fuzzy feeling. My philosophy about upgrades is they must not compromise reliability and cause headaches down the line.

 

[use2bn83]

Good info. Actually winching may not be what is stressing the horns the most, but vibrations from corrugated roads. Common down under.

I want to think Slee knows what their doing, though the clevis/rod would give me a warm fuzzy feeling. My philosophy about upgrades is they must not compromise reliability and cause headaches down the line.

Totally. The ARB, sticks out a lot further than the Slee bumper. Combine that with mounts that are sort of meant to flex, and the extra bolt might be needed to help with vibration.

The through bolt isn’t/wasn’t conducive to the rest of the bumpers design. Nor was it necessary to accomplish the design requirements. Time will certainly tell if there are fatigue issues. But they have yet to be seen on the Slee front bumper as far as I know.

It’s incredibly hard (at Slee’s scale) to predict fatigue stress. However, avoiding catastrophic failure from winching was a super high priority in the design. Most average offroaders severely underestimate the forces involved in winching

I’ll be the first to say that 99% of “upgrades” compromise OEM reliability.