Video Transcript for A Closer Look at the Aries TrailChaser Front Bumper on a 2021 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited

Hi, this is Scott with etrailer and today we're gonna be taking a look at and installing our TrailChaser Modular Bumper System for our 2021 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. The TrailChaser Modular bumper system is gonna allow you to have different kind of lighting systems on it if you want to change up your lighting systems. With our square bar up here, you can take off this top plate. And below the top plate, it's gonna have slotted holes, where you can either set up a square type light bar or individual light bars up top. Everything's modular and it bolts together. You're gonna have options of different bars that you can have on here.

We chose to go with the square bar on this one, but you can also take a look at the optional brush round bar style where it has two light tabs on top where you can put just a couple lights up top there or maybe even set up a square style LED light bar on there. This is gonna be a bolt together system where you're gonna have options where you can change out your end caps. You can also set it up where you have your factory fog lights in here, as long as you have the halogen style system, they just pop right in place and use your factory wiring. It's gonna be made of aluminum and it's gonna have kind of a glossy kind of powder coat finish on it. It's almost like a crinkle coat finish.

It's a pretty nice setup. It's gonna keep it from corroding. It's not gonna be a really heavy system either, so it's not gonna weigh down the front of your vehicle. Nice thing I like about it is it's aluminum, lot lighter than the steel version. You can also check into our winch plate system for these, and what you could do is there's a plate that goes underneath of the bumper here and it lines up with the holes here.

And what that'll do is allow you to mount a winch through and still give the strength and your frame to frame here. So you'll be able to use your plate, mount your winch on here and have a solid platform so you can have that set up as well. The Aries TrailChaser for your Jeep is gonna be a no drill installation. You don't have to do any cutting or anything like that. You basically unbolt your bumper and pull this one on.

If it's something you don't want to do yourself, you can take a look at our dealer locator and have something local and have somebody put it on for you. But if it's something you want to get done yourself, stick around and watch your video and we'll help you get it installed. To start our Aries bumper installation, we're gonna need to start with getting this top panel right here unclipped from our frame. So we have our little plastic push pins here. And as you'll see it has a slot where you can get a screwdriver in there. So what I'm gonna do is just get it turned so I can get access to it and it will spin for you. Get a screwdriver under it and just work our pin out. And just pull that out on both sides in the front. Along the backside of our bumper here, we're gonna have six push pins. We're gonna go ahead and pop those out the same way we did the ones right here on the frame. (pins rattling) With all of our push clips out of the way, we can lift out our panel. On the passenger side you're gonna have a gray plug and that's gonna be for our wiring harness for our front bumper. We're just gonna push in on the clip. Sometimes with these, they slide into a little holder here on the side of the frame. You may need to pull this up just so you can get a better grab on it, but if you push in on this side of the plug and then push in your clip, it's gonna come out a lot easier for you. Sometimes it'll give you a struggle, if it's the first time it's ever been unplugged. Underneath our little underbody panel here, we have two eight millimeter screws. We're just gonna pop those out real quick. (drill whirs) Along the inside of this panel, we're gonna have six push clips. We're just gonna go along with a screwdriver and pop those out and pull them off. Then we can get our panel taken off and put off to the side. With the six clips across the front, what we found easiest is to just get a plastic clip tool and get it from the side and kind of wiggle it in and just push 'em down all the way. These are kind of tucked in there so they can be a little bit tricky. Now with them all popped out, we can remove our panel. (panel rattles) Right here in the front we have this little plate we're gonna get out of the way just to kind of make it easier for us to get up in there and get in our bumper bolts. (ratchet clicks) (drill whirs) (ratchet clicks) (drill whirs) (plate rattles) There's gonna be eight 18 millimeter nuts on the back of your bumper, two on each side of the frame here on both sides. So we'll just take an 18 millimeter socket, a deep well socket, and we'll go ahead and get those started getting broke loose. (tool rattles) (bumper rattles) Now before we go any further, we do wanna go over the option of the winch plate. And what this is for is this is gonna allow you to mount a winch on your vehicle. This is something if you're planning on putting a winch on later on down the line, or you do have one you want to put on, this is something you're gonna want to get put on before you install your bumper, 'cause this will go underneath your bumper and be a reinforcement plate for your winch. If you're not interested in putting on the the winch plate or you don't plan on ever getting a winch on your vehicle, you can go ahead and skip over and we'll get started on putting that bumper on. Now we'll go ahead and get our hardware installed. We're gonna be going through this hole here and this one here. So we're gonna utilize our access hole in the front and we're gonna take our spacer and our carriage bolt and just run 'em through. (bolt rattling) Just kinda let those hang in place. (bolt rattling) Now this back one can be a little tricky, so you may need to use two fingers. Just go ahead and go through this access hole and then there's another access hole in the bottom. That's the best way to go with that. Now we have those through, we can go ahead and get our winch plate lined up and get hardware on this side and then we'll move on to the other side. Now we'll just lift our plate into place and we'll get two of the bolts started there and then we can get our other side moved and kind of get the holes lined up. And with that held in place we'll get the rest of our hardware put on these. We'll take a flat washer with a lock washer and thread on a nut. (washers rattling) Normally at this point what you'd want to do, that we have all our hardware in, is you'd want to get it leveled out and then get it torqued down. But what I'm gonna do is wait until I get the bumper put in place and get the hardware started on with that and then I'll come back through and get our plate torqued back down to the specifications listed in our instruction manual. At this point in our install, normally we would be taking the fog lights out of our factory bumper and installing them into this. Unfortunately for this one we have the LED fog lights in our factory bumper, so we're not gonna be able to install those. Now if you do have the factory halogen lights, those will pop right into place of this. So for now, we're gonna wait on those, and look at our aftermarket options for our fog lights. For now, we're gonna go ahead and start getting our bumper put in place. This can be a tight fit between the frame right here. So just kind of give a little tap, maybe move your bumper around a little bit and you'll get it to go for you. Each side, just kind of tap it in. (hands tapping) (metal clanging) When you look right up here in the front, just get your holes lined up the best you can and we're gonna go ahead and get some hardware started through. You may have to move your bumper around a little bit to get 'em to line up. With all of our hardware in place, we'll go ahead and take our 18 millimeter socket and tighten down our hardware. We just want to get it smoked. (wrench clicking) Now that we have all our hardware kinda snug down, we're gonna come back through and we're gonna torque our bolts down to the torque specifications listed in our instruction manual. (tool rattling) Now that we have our main body of our bumper all torqued down, now if you went ahead and did the winch plate underneath, now's the time we're gonna want to get it all leveled up with our bumper and line up our holes and get our winch plate torqued down. With our bolts snug down, we're gonna pop back up here and make sure we have everything lined up before we go and do our final torque specs. Everything looks good here and it looks like it's sitting flat against the bottom of our bumper and the holes look good. So we're gonna hop under there now and we'll torque 'em down to the specifications listed in our instruction manual. (tool beeping) (tool rattling) Now that we have the center section bumper put on, now is when we can decide on what we wanna put on for our options. The nice thing about this bumper system is it is modular, so you can change it up any way you want. Today we are going to be installing this section here for our our brush bar here, and we do have the option of our round brush bar here. And with our round brush bar, it does have light tabs already tacked in place here, so you can actually just put on some bolt on lights if you wanted to. And to kind of give you an idea of what that looks like on there, we'll just get it set in place. And it is gonna have a little bit of an overhang out the front of the bumper. And what that's gonna do is kind of act like a brush bar. So say you're going through some tall brush or something, this is gonna help push the brush down and under so it's not coming back and smacking up on the front of your Jeep there. And with your light tabs there, that's a nice option too, because you can go with your LED squares or rounds, whatever you want to go there. And those do mount on with two bolts through our bumper here. So it's kind of a nice design that you have that modular option. Now to mount up our brush bar here, we have all of our hardware lined up and we have a 16 millimeter socket, and we have our ratchet ready to go, and we have our 16 millimeter stubby wrench. Just gonna go ahead and get it put in place and we'll get our hardware all set up. Now with our hardware just we're gonna start with our bolt and a flat washer and we're gonna run it right through and get it lined up in our bumper. And with that we can go right through the bottom. Use a flat washer and then our lock washer and then our nut. And we'll do this on both sides for all of our hardware. Now with all of our hardware in place, we'll just get it snug down and we'll come back through and torque 'em down. (ratchet clicking) Before you get 'em completely tight though, you're gonna wanna make sure you have your bar where you want it, kind of just center it up, and make sure it's going through the angles here and make sure you have it right where you want it before you get it down too tight. After we get all of our hardware snug down, we're just gonna come back through with our torque wrench and get it torqued down to the specifications listed in our instruction manual. (tool beeping) Now as far as options, you can get a kit where it has the LED on the corner lights that act like ditch lights. This is a really nice setup. Or you can get the plain version where it has no lights at all. This is just solid end cap. This is what comes with the kit. So this is the one we're gonna be installing today and we'll go ahead and get started on that. Now we'll just get our end cap in place and they are side specific. You'll be able to tell kind of how it lines up just by the way it looks and just get all your lines lined up and get your hardware put in place. (hardware rattling) Now from the hardware in your kit, you're gonna take your bolt, a flat washer, and then you're gonna run it through, and then you're gonna take a flat washer, a lock washer, and then your nut. (metal scrapes) With everything tightened and torqued down, that'll do it for our look at and our installation of our Aries TrailChaser bumper on our 2021 Jeep Wrangler Unlimited.