jrfarrar.com : Jeep

Tomken Machine's Front Bumper
for 1997 and up Cherokees

by: J.R. Farrar

Ok, so I didn't scratch up the front bumper on a trail ride. So why replace it you ask? Well Project X needed some type of tow point on the front of the vehicle. It did not come from the factory with front tow hooks. As we all know, these are a MUST for trail duty. Second I wanted to either trim the lower portion of the front air dam, or remove it completly for a better approach angle. Being an all purpose vehicle I see a need for some type of winch provision in the future. With all this being said, I felt that the new Tomken Machine front bumper solved all of these problems at once. By integrating a 2" receiver into the front of the bumper, it can be used as a tow point, or for a future winch mount! At the time of this writing, I am unaware of any other front bumpers currently produced for the 1997-98 Cherokees. I called Tomken Machine and had a bumper with the receiver hitch on the way.

The bumper was packed up real good and tight in a very large box. They used styrefoam and paper to support the bumper in the box. This bumper has Tomken's new powdercoating on it and boy is it nice! It seems really durable and scratch resistant. You can also get the coating with "texture" in it to match the texture in the stock plastic moldings.

I read through the instructions and checked out all of the parts to make sure everything was there. Everthing was packed and marked well, and I had no problems figuring out the directions.

Installation:

The first step was to remove the stock bumper. To remove the side plastic moldings, first remove the two bolts pointed to by the white arrows in the first picture. Then crawl under the Jeep and on the inside of the plastic moulding there are two bolts with nuts that hold it to the side of the jeep. These might take a while to locate, but closely inspect photo #2, and that should get you real close. Photo #2 is a shot of the inside passenger side fender. The part of the tire that you can see is the front of the tire. You should be able to locate the horn assembly, and the vaccuum canister that is bolted to the inside of the bumper on the passenger side. Repeat this step for both sides


Once you have all 4 bolts removed you can carefully pull the plastic moulding off the front bumper. There is a small keyed piece of plastic that holds the moudling to the top of the bumper, be careful not to break it off when removing it. Once you get the passenger side off, repeat for the driver side. You will not be able to completly remove the plastic moudlings from the vehicle since the lower portion of it is rivited to the air dam. I just left it rivited, and continued with removing the bumper. Your bumper should now look like this. Next remove the 4 bolts that hold the bumper to the bumper brackets. The white arrows are pointing to their locations. These are a number 55 torxs head bolts.

Before you remove the bumper from the brackets, make sure you disconnect the vaccuum canister line! It is located on the vaccuum canister that is bolted on the inside of the bumper on the passenger side. The photo shows the canister bolted to the bumper once the bumper was removed from the vehicle. You'll now want to remove the canister from the bumper since we'll need to mount it on the vehicle.

You're jeep should now look like this, pretty neat huh! I outlined with a white line where to mount the vaccum canister. There is a bracket that suports the fender that is the perfect location to remount the canister. I used the factory screws and captive nuts to mount it, but zip ties would be acceptable.

Next we needed to remove the factory bumper brackets. There are 3 bolts per side holding each bracket on. The first picture shows the driver side bracket in place with arrows pointing to the 3 bolts. The second picture shows the passenger side bracket removed with white circles showing where the bolts were. You'll now want to remove the captive nuts that were used with the frontmost bracket bolts. You will be replacing these captive nuts and bolts with new ones. However you'll need to re-use 2 of the bumper bracket bolts that you removed. They are the rearmost ones.

You can now see the Tomken bracket where the old bracket used to be. You should be able to tell that the front 2 bolts are new, and the rear bolt is the original bolt. Be careful as to which bracket goes where. Follow the diagram that is included with the instructions.

The next step is to mount the bumper to the Jeep. It would be nice to have a helper for this part. This is a pretty stout bumper and too heavy to support by yourself while trying to start a bolt. I used a small saw horse on one end to support the bumper, then started the 2 bolts on the other side. Everything lined up perfectly! Now don't tighten these bolts down just yet, leave them all loose. The new brackets have elongated holes for the bumper so that you can align it where you see fit. I lifted mine as high as possible without touching the grille assembly. Once you get the bumper where you like it, you can tighten the bolts down.

Now you will notice that the factory plastic splash guards may need to be trimmed in a few spots to fit well with the new bumper. I just used a pair of tin snips to clean up the edges, and then fastened the plastic down in a few places. Also my front rubber splash guard was just "hanging" around and flapping in the wind. With the original bumper it didn't matter since it hung lower and hid this rubber piece. However with the new bumper you will be able to see it, so I used some black silicon to fasten the rubber to the crossmember. You can also use some small sheetmetal screws with large washers to accomplish this. Throughout the pictures, I highlighted in red this rubber piece.



I'll have to admit at first I was not thrilled with the appearance of the bumper. I didn't feel that it fit the lines of the new Cherokee very well. I am impressed with how it was built, it's approach angle and the receiver that I now had. Oddly enough as I took Project X to differnt trail rides and even to the store. I received more compliments on this bumper than anything else on Project X. So apparently I'm astheically challenged since everyone else seems to like it. After a few weeks it started to grow on me, and now I like the "industrial" look of the bumper. It definitly gives the Cherokee some character! There is no doubt when you see Project X, that it's not your everyday SUV. Tomken Machine's receiver winch mount will work with this bumper, but we'll save that for later.

Call Tomken Machine for latest pricing and information.
Tomken Machine can be reached at: 

Tomken Machine
35680 U.S. Hwy. 24 N.
Buena Vista, Co 81211
Phone: (719)- 395-2526
Fax: (719)-395-4037