Winch Bumper Recommendations?

BigToe wrote:

Mello Mike wrote:

wintersun wrote:
Be careful as these replacement bumpers can result in the air bags not activating in an accident. The airbags are usually activated by sensors behind the bumpers and designed to work in tandem with an impact. The people selling these bumpers are either not aware or not about to hurt their business by mentioning this aspect of the "upgrade".

That's a great point, Bruce. Thanks for bringing that up.

Mike

Before assuming there is a "sensor behind the bumper that activates the airbags", it might be useful to check the wiring diagrams and look behind the bumper itself. It is just as likely that there is nothing of the kind in that location or even general vicinity.

In the earliest days of airbags, sensors behind the bumper were common, but that was a quarter century ago. Neither my Ford nor my Chevy trucks have anything like that in the front, and they are both about a decade old now.

With bumpers and grilles removed, and factory wiring diagrams in hand, I was able to verify this.

I'm not saying that adding an aftermarket bumper won't have any effect on crash energy absorption and the load paths the impact takes throughout the rest of the vehicle in distributing that energy... but I am saying that the sensors that trigger airbags do not necessarily require a "direct" or "line of site" hit to activate, and therefore the sensors are not necessarily required to be behind the bumper.

And which auto manufacturer do you work for as an engineer?

The person who first brought up the subject was the fellow at the auto body shop when I was looking to replace a damaged front bumper with something stronger. The body shop has to be sure that their repairs do not prevent the airbags from working as a single accident where they did not work would put the shop out of business.

I had brush guards on my trucks up to the point of them coming with air bags. To me it is a matter of having repairable damage from hitting an animal with my vehicle or dying in an accident when the air bags do not deploy. For me it is a pretty easy decision.

Something that I see all the time when looking at trucks that sustained damage from hitting a large mammal is that most of the damage to the vehicle is at the windshield and this is where the accident can prove fatal to both the animal and the driver. I can't see where a heavy duty front bumper and grill guard are going to protect the driver and personally that is a lot more important than protecting my radiator and head lamps.