Hey gang,
I was wondering if anyone had a ARB or shrock front bumper and has been in any significant accident. I am wondering what the impact is on the factory airbags. Will they work?
ARB does not have the X on the approved list.

Any advice on how to keep the safety features of the truck for around town, but still put on a real capable bumper?

DBAX was in a pretty big wreck and I think he had an ARB - not sure if they deployed or not.

My understanding is that the airbag sensors are based on inertia - they don't work by being crushed in the accident, just by detecting a strong shockwave or rapid deceleration... if that is true then the bumper might increase their likelihood of going off by providing more rigidity.

Calmini bumper
ETA- bags did not deploy

Not sure wher I saw it, but I did see a guy in a fronteir on a forum who got in and accident. He had a Shrockworks bumper and it DID deploy, and it DID save is life and his daughter's.

ALL of the aftermarket bumpers don't hurt the airbag deployment.

Air bags deploy if the decelleration is severe enough to hurt you badly enough when you are thrown forward.

So - If your BODY is going to keep going forward, relative to the interior cabin, with enough force to be of severe concern...the bag will go off.

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Example - lets say you are in a battleship going 40 knots, and a 18' fishing boat crosses your path, and you hit it dead center, and cut it in half, etc...

Inside the battleship, you feel nothing...perhaps a slight knock, etc....but, your momentum carries you forward, and the battleship's decelleration in response to the impact is negligable...

...An airbag, if the battleship had them, would not go off, as you didn't decellerate enough to set it off....you did not NEED the protection.

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If you do the same thing in your 12' motor boat, and hit the 18' fishing boat at 40 knots the same way...you WILL decellerate noticeably...and, if you HAD airbags, they might go off.

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If you repeat the experiement on the road....lets say with a shrock...

You plow into a car, and the momentum of your truck carries you through, so you are still going forward...and the other car is pushed back...the energy is transferred to the other car...and you don't get decellerated as much.

Without the shrock...assuming the impact is about the same...the same thing would happen, except you'd have more damage, and your truck's bumper would do more crumpling.

If you hit a tree, or a rock, etc...YOU do all of the absorbing and decelleration will be from whatever to 0, assuming the tree/rock doesn't budge.

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So - the bumper doesn't really change the momentum, just the transfer, as the OTHER rig has to absorb the damage, and YOU get to carry forward intact.

If the crash was severe enough to crumple your frame, that will still happen, as the bumpers are merely mounted to the frame horns out in front...

The bumper will DISTRIBUTE the impact across its face though, lessening the severity, and providing more structural integrity...and ultimately, subjecting the truck to less stress.

(An impact that is not distributed tends to cause the most damage...a driver's side head light to passenger's side headlight type collision is more severe than a grill to grill head on crash for that specific reason....and why European crash tests are offset crashes, etc.)

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Several people have reported collisions that they survived BECAUSE of their bumpers, ARB, Calmini, Shrock for example...ALL have examples of taking the hit and saving the X....mostly by DISTRIBUTING the force across the face of the bumper.

Sometimes the airbags go off, if needed due to the rate of decelleration, and sometimes they don't, because they were not needed. (In all cases, the bags worked when they were needed/properly).

I got to test this out yesterday. Yes both front airbags went off. It was not that bad of a hit either max woulda been 15-20 mph. The bumper did however do the same thing that a brush guards woulda done. So now I am wondering why everyone is saying how much better the schrock and arbs are compared to the brush guards. My hood, grill, both fenders and some of the simpler stuff in the engiane bay need to be replaced now. the other guy was in a tahoe with a stock rear bumper and just his bumper and 1 side panel needs to be replaced.

Pictures please! I'm going to guess you hit the Tahoe with the headlight protection part of the bumper. (Let me know if I'm wrong) If you hit the tahoe with the actual Bumper part of the shrock I'd have a hard time believing that it cause that much damage. A regular brush guard will fold into your hood and damage the truck regaurdless of where the contact is made. I'm sorry to hear that you crashed your truck though thats never funny. In the fire academy we were taught that the airbags won't deploy unless your driving atleast 30MPH..

I will have pics tommorow.
The shackles and shackle tabs took the brunt of the hit. I was was hitting the brakes hard when I hit so the nose of my trunk was going down when I hit him. Also the bumper bent a little by being pushed in from the tab. That is not big deal though, still looks good.

ETA:: I only had about 50-100 feet to accelerate, there is now way in hell that truck was doing 30.

I had a head on (left front corner to left front corner, not a direct head on) with my ARB on Jan 1st 2004. I suffered ~$1500 worth of damage (to bumper, turn-signal lamp assembly, grill, front quarter panel, hood) while the other guy's Malibu was totaled.

I was stopped, the other vehicle hit me at a speed of at least 25 mph (his speed claim, I believe he was going faster) without even attempting to slow down before impact.

The airbags did not deploy. Probably because I was stopped before impact.

As for the "why people say the shrock or ARB is better than a brush guard" question - well, they are. I've hit rocks and trees with my ARB on the trail at slow speeds which have caused little or no damage to my X (in one case I tore a large section of bark off of a tree).

It's a winch bumper, not the armor of Ironman.

And don't forget that the bumper mounts onto the frame horns, which are designed to crumple in a high-energy collision. The front bumper won't prevent the frame horns from bending or twisting.

My guess is that the damage would have been much worse had you had a stock bumper or brushguard.

Yeah - the difference is that with the brush guards, 5-10 mph causes collateral damage worse than if you had just a stock front end...and zero damage with a steel bumber.

Obviously, after a certain impact force, as the aftermarket bumpers are attached to the frame horns, which are not titanium rail road ties running the length of the truck, etc...the frame will absorb the impact as normal, and crush zones will absorb crash forces as noraml, and if the rate of decelleration would hurt you, the air bags will deploy as normal.

The advantages is that the forces are distributed across both horns, and across the entire face of the steel bumper....rather than making a point of entry type penetration typical of a stock crash...

Which means that the severity of the impact is diluted, and your rate of decelleration is slower, so you are less likely to be hurt.

It also takes more impact force to CAUSE any damage...I've hit full sized deer at hwy speeds with zero damge to my Shrock, or to the truck, other than fleshy shards requiring clean-up etc. (Venison Puree...)

People who hit deer with a Brush Guard typically need a new radiator, brush guard, hood, fenders, bumper, etc...and their air bags sometimes go off too.....

Replacing fired off air bags is very expensive....and involves a lot of downtime btw.

I'd much rather have a Shrock, venison puree, and no truck damage, than a Brush Guard, and need a new front end and the airbags replaced, etc.

I know that the bumper is much better. Anyone that has wheeled with me knows how I abuse it. I was more or less venting bout the whole thing happening at the time I posted that.

Schrock does make a great bumper and I will never replace it unless its with a new schrock.

Well the X is in the shop now. First estimate I got was 4k and that was with out alot of the stuff the second place spotted. I never got a number from the shop that has it, but its the place the insurance uses so I am just going with them anyways. They want to replace the bumper, but there is not much damage and I dont want to wait the 6 weeks for one to be delivered.

Well here are some of the pics.

I was just going to post up wanderinwoods's thread but they beat me to it..

Not sure if someone else mentioned it yet, but I'm pretty sure the airbag sensor in your 07 is inside the center console under the cupholders.

I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong.

The sensors are always in the passenger compartment, as its the rate of decelleration of the seats that they need to know...if you are decelllerating too fast, you get hurt, like hitting a wall, etc.

If the seats are slowing down at a reasonable rate, because the OTHER car is crumpling like an aluminum can, the deer is beeing venison pureed, the hood and crumple zones are folding like they're supposed to in a severe enough crash, etc.....then the bags don't go off, because the sensors are not slamming to a halt too fast, etc.

My understanding is that ARB makes some of their bumpers "airbag" compliant by adding crush cans so that the decel curve matches the existing factory, with the result that the bumper pivots much like a brush guard and does huge amounts of damage (saw a pic somewhere where someone was bitching about how their air bag bumper took a moderate collison and bent down). I think air bag crush cans are on jeeps and landrovers (my quess is more lawyers own those).

Airbags can still deploy with bullbars, but I am told that they may deploy sooner all things being equal due to their stiffness. But there are so many variables in an accident I am not inclined to worry about it.

You have it backwards.

The air bags deploy when the cockpit slows down too fast, like in a collision...

The bumpers are not what really absorb the impact, they primarily distribute it.

The exceptions are stock bumpers with little shock absorbers built into them, but, many people don't realize that this is NOT to protect the occupants....this is to make a flimsy bumper able to pass the 2.5 or 5 mph bumper tests, as needed.

The forces in a crash severe enough to require airbag deployment to save you, are so in excess of what these little bumper dampers deal with, as to render them meaningless.

The truck as a whole, if the crash is severe enough to slow the passenger compartment too much, will crumple at its pre-designated crumple zones.

Adding a strong bumper does not make the truck slow faster, it tends to make the OTHER object crumple and absorb the impact instead....AND, it tends to DISTRIBUTE the force of the impact across the entire face of the bumper, rather than allow it to focus upon the point of impact.

For example, all of the aftermarket bumpers attach to the frame horns, the same way the stock bumper does.....so, that's the limiting factor for all of them...

...if the crash is severe enough to crumple the frame horns, the accordion-like crumple designed into the trucks will work as normal.

If you look at a typical crash, say against a tree, or the corner of an incoming car, etc...the truck has to do ALL of its impact absorption on the middle, or side point of impact....

...and if you look at accidents that involve this, say a head on square into a tree... the truck is always pushed in at the point of impact...like the tree pushed the engine down, crumples the hood, etc...and makes a path visible through the middle of the truck....as in the two headlight ends are behind the tree, but the tree is against the windshield, etc....

...meaning that the tree impact involved a section down the middle alone, and the part that absorbed the impact was not helped by the parts to the sides.

Same with a corner to corner collision...the most common type....one corner does all the crumpling, and the middle and other side are bypassed....unable to absorb any of the impact.

The more of the truck's structure that can absorb the impact, the slower the rate of slowing will be, as each part of the structure absorbs more and more of the incoming impact...like a catcher's mitt being drawn back on impact to soften the hit of that fast ball, etc.

If you have a strong front end, with a steel after market bumper...

1. It takes a lot of force to do any damage at all in the first place, because the OTHER object is forced to do the absorbing.

2. If you are going to hit something that will not give (A deer gives when Shrocked, most other cars give when Shrocked, a bridge abutment or a big tree, etc...probably would not, etc...)....and you are hitting hard enough that the frame horns are going to crumple anyway...

....the ENTIRE front end of the truck will be working to save your ass...all three crush zones will be slowing your rate, not just one.

So, sure, you will possibly total the truck either way if you ram a big tree or another car at 60 mph...the difference is you might live.

3. As the sensors for the bags are in the cabin...if you need them to go off, they do, as normal, period.

They are just less likely to NEED to go off, as you are less likely to need them to save you from injury.

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All of the after market bumpers will help in this regard...even if they themselves are sacrificed in the process.

The difference between a Shrock and an ARB for example would be -

The ARB has thin 10 gauge Sheet Metal, vs the Shrock's 3/16" Steel Plate for the faces.

The Shrock uses one continuous 3/8" thick Steel Plate from the recovery points at the front of the bumper, welded through the bumper face, braced by 1/4" Steel Plate boxing and triangulation, running all the way to the frame horns.

The ARB's 10 ga sheet metal with 3/16" bracing is a lot less substantial, and it is not tied directly and continuously back to the frame horns the way the Shrock is, so it will crumple more, and protect less....

...but, even the ARB distributes the impact across the face of the bumper, and I've seen the results of them taking head on impacts, and protecting the truck from being totalled, or even damaged in some cases...they themselves just tend to take more damage, but, they do work, and it does take a lot of impact to hurt the primary structure.

They weigh as much as the Shrocks mostly because they are a lot larger overall, and more thin metal can weigh as much as less thick metal, etc.

So - ARB and Shrock are not the only bumpers, but as the two mentioned, the above is a comparison.

TJM, KMA, and Calmini for example make sturdy bumpers too.



ALL of them work better than a Brush Guard...even if they can also be damaged by a severe enough accident...it just takes A LOT to do any damage.



Again..the aftermarket BUMPERS do run from their fronts to the frame horns...so impacts tend to be straight at the frame horn lines...at your maximum strength point.....

Brush Guards cannot run straight back to the horns...all the plastic and stock bumper is in the way....so they need to have a mount that loops way down, under all that stuff, and then back up, to reach the horns...making a giant lever arm...

Its this giant lever arm that makes the brush guards ineffective protection...its just too much force applied by the involved leverage to resist, and they fold back, etc.

So, sure you CAN fold back a steel bumper if the hit is substantial enough, but it takes WAY more to do it than for a Guard.