After installing many; and I mean many front and rear aftermarket steel and aluminum bumpers on all types of land cruisers, I can vouch for this statement. Only a small select few companies actually test their products in Offroad environments including the rocks. I don’t want to put down big brands as some of them take valuable feedback from the community and redesign their bumpers to make them better, but it’s obvious that some just make it heavy and pretty to then ship units…
Companies like Delta and Slee actually product test in some rather nasty scenarios to beta test bumpers before the public gets them because these products save lives and people actually use them. Hell even what most people hate on (ARB and Ironman) even test their bumpers off grid and for crash compliance. I know the Aussie bumpers tend to not hold up as well to hard abuse but you have to consider that these brands ship worldwide so weight is a big factor which means the product needs to be lighter for weight savings while also meeting Australian engineering requirements. This makes companies save as much weight while also being able to handle a rated pull. GVWR restrictions is why they are lighter than most American versions.
Hot take but I’ve personally seen Dissent bumpers on 200 series not fair well off road and twist due to the modular design. I know Ben addressed this with an updated design, but it still makes you question the robustness as well as the customers being potentially left out to dry that suffered body damage from said design flaw. I’m not here to dog on good brands, but feedback and customer support is what keeps a company in business long term in our industry. Anyone can make a bumper that looks pretty and give it to some instagram celebs to say how amazing it is.
To pile on, albeit with a smaller sample size than ZetheGSD, I've seen some Slee products from years ago put through their paces and looking like the best part of the vehicle (80 series bumper coming to mind). That has always stood out in my mind.
ARB - I'm a fan of the bumpers, and while not questioning people who have installed more of them, the handful of ARB
front bumpers I have had (Toyotas) and worked on (Jeeps) have been heavy as #$%^. Now, the rear bumpers, skids, and sliders, which are often more like steps... the small number I have seen have been lighter weight and more geared towards ease of shipment and installation for the overlading crowd. And that's probably by design as mentioned above.
Beyond bumpers, if we are talking in general about well designed, properly tested, and well manufactured parts to go offroad, I feel like there is a pretty small number of companies fitting that bill accross platforms. When you have an out of production, niche vehicle like the LC200, I'm happy to have even a handful. I'm playing around a bit in the Bronco world, and have a few years and Wrangler builds sprinked in amongst the Toyotas, and even with both of those having a much larger number of potential customers modifying their rigs, the number of manufacturers designing, testing, and delivering really high quality products is pretty small in my humble opinion.
As an example in the Jeep world, there are several hundred people a year dropping $15-$20K on axles. I haven't owned or wrenched on all of them, but I've seen axles from a half dozen different 'manufacturers' break, come out of the crate with tubes that are not square, or have bracket welds so bad that I wouldn't want to to wheel the rig over a curb at the mall. If that relatively basic, and easy to see stuff if done poorly, that really makes me wonder if anything I can't see or easily check was done the right way. At the moment there is exactly one well known axle builder that does bolt in Jeep axles that I would use for a build. That's out of probably a half dozen of the more well known options. Now there are some other more specialized builders doing axles for trophy trucks and pre-runners, but for 'bolt in' axles for a platform like the JL/JT, I am blown away by the number of high priced, low quality products floating around.
Coming back to the OP, thank you for sharing a thoughtful and thorough review!
