Barricade Trail Force HD Rear Bumper with E-Z Open Tire Carrier (07-18 Jeep Wrangler JK)

Video Review & Installation

Hey guys, so today I'm here with the Barricade Trail Force HD Rear Bumper and E-Z Open Tire Carrier fitting all 2007 to 2018 JK Wranglers. This is gonna be a perfect fit for the JK owner looking to change up the rear end styling of their Wrangler to get some aggressive styling while also adding a ton of functionality or even just looking to match a heavy duty front bumper. Now, when you upgrade your wheels and tires, you are adding some weight to your stock tire carrier, so it's always recommended that you upgrade to a heavy duty tire carrier to handle all of that extra weight. If you have a larger tire on your stock spare tire carrier, it can wear out the hinges and just not have them function like they did right out of the factory and they can wear out over time. So this rear bumper and tire carrier combo is gonna be a perfect solution to just that while also adding some heavy duty rear end protection and a couple of recovery points if you ever get into a pinch on the trail. So at the moment, this is gonna be roughly $750, and personally, I think that's a good price point for a bumper like this and what this comes with, considering rear bumper and tire carrier combos can range anywhere from $550 all the way up to $1,500. So on the other hand, those more expensive options will just be for more in depth designs and they may come with different materials as well as different options for adding on components as well as mounting points for any other extra accessories. Now if you're not looking for all those bells and whistles and you're looking for the easiest way to get a very functional, convenient, and great-looking rear bumper and tire carrier combo, then this is gonna be a great option.So install is gonna be a pretty easy one out of three wrenches on the difficulty meter. It shouldn't take you any longer than an hour, an hour and a half with a couple of hand tools. So speaking of the install, let's jump into that now. The tools that I use for my install were an impact wrench, a trim removal tool, a 19 millimeter open-ended wrench, an 18 millimeter open-ended wrench, a 13 millimeter open-ended wrench, a 3/8 inch drive, and quarter inch drive ratchet, a 21 millimeter shallow socket, a 13/16 inch deep socket, a 19 millimeter deep socket, an 18 millimeter, 17 millimeter, and 13 millimeter shallow socket, a 6 millimeter Allen key, a T20 Torx bit, a 3 inch extension and a 5 inch extension, and a rubber mallet. So the first step to our install is to remove our spare tire. I'm using a 13/16 inch deep socket. You may be using a 19 millimeter deep socket depending on your lug nut size. So now we're gonna remove our rear bumper. I'm gonna start by removing the two bolts holding in this bracket on our frame rail. I'm gonna be using a 17 millimeter socket to remove those two bolts. Now we can do the same thing on the other side. So you may have two more tabs that are holding the bumper on to the rear frame rail, they'll be located underneath here. You can go ahead and remove those now. We don't actually have those on there right now, so we are ready to remove our rear bumper.So before we remove our spare tire carrier, we do need to disconnect our third brake light harness. So what you're gonna do is open up your tailgate, and we're gonna remove that trim piece inside to expose the harness. So you're gonna pop that open. So what we need to do is remove this vent piece on the outer portion of our tailgate. I'm just gonna grab a trim removal tool to help me pop that off. It will be held in by two retainer clips. You can pop those off. Be careful of these tabs because they are plastic and they will break off.So here's your third brake light harness. We have to remove that. You'll have two white clips on the side. You do need to pull those back so it will release and then we can pop that out of place and close up our tailgate. So to finish up with the third brake light harness, we do have to remove this grommet to pull the harness out so we can fully remove our spare tire carrier. I'm again using the trim removal tool to do that. Be careful of your paint as well, and we can remove that. So I just grabbed my 13 millimeter socket and my impact wrench. You can use a ratchet and an extension here to clear the carrier. And we're gonna remove the eight bolts that are holding in our carrier. So with this last bolt, just make sure that you have a handle on your carrier because it will come off, and you can fully remove it.So with this new Barricade setup, you are getting a ton of functionality over the stock setup. So first off, its gonna be a lot more durable, made of 5/32 inch plated steel. And this is gonna be able to take some abuse off-road as well as be able to hold a lot of weight up to a 37 inch tire. It's also gonna have a black powder coat finish on it. This is gonna resist any rust or corrosion on the metal underneath, resist any surface damage as well as assist in giving you a off-road and aggressive look to the rear end of your Wrangler.Now, you also are getting a couple of recovery points here. You have two welded D-ring mounts, with D-rings able to fold up to four and three-quarter tons. So, that's definitely something that your stock rear bumper is unable to give you. And it really will come in handy if you do get in a pinch on the trail. So another thing that's gonna help you out on the trail is your hitch receiver. So this comes with a welded standard two inch hitch receiver. So this is perfect for a recovery point or if you want to mount up any hitch receiver accessories.So moving on to the spare tire carrier, even though it is a lot smaller than the average spare tire carrier, it will be able to hold up to a 37 inch tire, being able to hold a lot of weight. And that's definitely a lot more than your stock set up is unable to give you. So you won't get a lot of adjustability up and down with this setup like some other options. However, I do like the fact that this is a single-action setup. So with the single-action setup, that's where the E-Z Open gets its name. So instead of opening up your spare tire carrier and then opening up your tailgate, all you have to do is open up your tailgate to gain access to your cargo area, making it super convenient and something that is definitely worth the extra couple of bucks in the long run.This will also come with a couple of bearings for the spindle to ensure a long lifespan and resist any seizing up over time. So with that, let's go ahead and install our new bumper. So our first step is to insert these welded nut plates into our frame rail. So you wanna make sure that everything lines up and that you have the welded nut facing the inside of the frame rail. So after the welded nut plates are in the frame rail, you're ready to mount up your rear bumper. And you do have to line up the holes.Now with the supplied bolt, flat washer, and lock washer, we are going to secure the side of the bumper bracket here to our frame rail into that welded nut plate. You're gonna have to do this while holding the bumper. So I would recommend doing this with a friend. So once that's threaded in, we can take an 18 millimeter socket and we can tighten that down. Now we do wanna still be able to adjust the bumper. So we're not gonna tighten it down fully because we do have to secure it down with the hitch receiver bolts just like the OEM hitch receiver. And we'll do this on both sides. All right. So that is pretty snug. However, we will still be able to move that around. So I can do the same thing on the other side. The only reason why I'm tightening these down or snugging these up, should I say, is for extra insurance. We do need to get underneath the bumper, but we still need to be able to move it around and we wanna be as safe as possible. Now that that's snugged up, we can get underneath the bumper and put in our hitch receiver bolts. So our next step is to install our hitch receiver bolt. We're gonna insert our provided plate here and then grab our provided hardware. It's gonna be the longest bolts that you have in the kit. We are going to stick that through the frame rail and secure it on the other side. I recommend to get all of the bolts through. We have two bolts in. We can secure that down with the flat washer and the provided nylon locknut on the other side. So this is just gonna provide some more rigidity, some more strength to the back of our bumper instead of it being secured down by just the four bolts on the side of the frame rail. Now we can tighten all those down with a 19 millimeter wrench for the nut side and a 18 millimeter socket for the bolt head side. So now we can go back and tighten down the four bolts, two on either side of our frame rail here. And that's gonna be with an 18 millimeter socket.After our bumper has mounted up, we do have to do a bit of assembly before we can get our spare tire carrier on to our bumper. So first thing we're gonna do is transfer over our stock third brake light onto our new extended third brake light housing or bracket. So I have a T20 Torx bit. We're gonna remove the four Torx bits that are...or Torx bolts that are holding in our third brake light. After those are out, we can remove the brake light, and we can put our stock carrier aside. So now after we have this off, what we can do is transfer over our new third brake light harness. This is actually gonna be extended. So when you adjust your third brake light to clear your larger tire, this will reach a lot farther than your stock harness will. All you have to do is unplug it from the actual light. So we can put this aside as well and plug in our new harness.So once that's on, we can grab our new third brake light bracket and mount this up. So just like our old bracket, gonna place that in. I do like the fact that this comes with a little grommet on the outside. So the steel is not messing up our third brake light. We're gonna do is turn that over, and we're gonna secure it down with the OEM hardware. So what we can do now is take our third brake light bracket and mount it up to the bracket that's going to be placed on our tailgate. So you will be able to adjust this depending on your tire size. Obviously, if you have a 33, you can leave it at its lowest point. If you are mounting up a 37, I would recommend to jump up a little bit. For a 35, we're gonna stick right in the middle. And you can grab your hardware. This is gonna be the smaller bolts with the flat washer as well as the lock washer.So the flat washer is gonna go on the outside. And on the inside you're going to put on the lock washer up against that nut there. This is going to make sure that the nut doesn't come off since the lock washer will add pressure holding on that nut there. Then we can go ahead and grab a 13 millimeter wrench and a 13 millimeter socket and ratchet and tighten those down. So to make our lives a whole lot easier, what we're gonna do is mount up our spare tire carrier bracket to our actual carrier before we put it on our rear bumper. Now on the back here, you will have five slots, and that will be able to adjust up and down. You also will be able to loosen that these bolts here and adjust in and out. So you will have some adjustability so you will have to measure depending on your tire size.So what we're gonna do is mount it up right in the middle, grab our provided hardware, and we can attach that now. So now we can take our provided hardware. You're gonna have a bolt, two flat washers, and a nylon locknut and we can secure that down. So what you can do now is take a 19 millimeter deep socket for the nut on the back and an 18 millimeter wrench for the bolts head here, and we can go ahead and tighten those down.So after all of our components are assembled, we can move back over to our rear bumper. And what we're gonna do first before we install our races and bearings is just grease this spindle here. You can use any standard wheel grease. We just wanna make sure that this gets greased up pretty good so it doesn't seize in the long run, has a long lifespan. Now we can go grab our bearings and races. So first we can install our ring spacer. This is gonna prevent our bottom race from hitting this bottom piece of metal here. And then you're going to take your bottom race, your bearing, and your top race, and we can secure those down.So before we put our carrier on, we do want to secure down this top bearing. Now we do need to tap it in place. Be very careful that it sits correctly and that it's seated properly. Once that is in there, we can grab our carrier and move over to the Jeep. So now we can place our carrier onto our spindle. And we can seat this into place. So the instructions specified to put the bearing and race on the spindle before we install our carrier, what I found the easiest way to do that is to actually take the race, the bearing, and the spacer, flip the carrier upside down, put that in the bottom here, and then put the carrier on. It was just a whole lot easier rather than lining everything up.So now we can take our cap, put that over our spindle here and our button head bolt. We can thread that into our spindle. And we can take a six millimeter Allen key and tighten that down. So our next step is to install the bracket that's gonna be holding our Heim joint and connecting our tailgate to our spare tire carrier on to the back of our tailgate. So you are just going to use the factory hardware. We're gonna secure these bottom two holes down first. And we will get to the top two bolts in just a minute when we attach our third brake light bracket.So now we're ready to attach our third brake light bracket. So what we're gonna do is line this up. Thread these two in. And we actually have spacers here that we have to put on this side in order for everything to match up. So we're gonna start with the side that already has the bracket. Now that those are hand tight, we can take our spacers, place them behind here, line everything up. So before we actually tighten everything down, I would recommend to put the two last bolts back in place just so those holes are closed and there's no rain, snow, dirt, mud getting into those holes that would hinder you later. So after those are threaded in, we can take our 13 millimeter socket and tighten all those down. So for this last one, you will need a small extension. I just have a three inch extension here just because it is in the middle here and you may not be able to access it. So our next step is just to feed our extended third brake light wiring harness through the OEM hole and to secure that grommet. What I like to do is pull back on that lip and it should fit in. So, you have this little lip here that's going to hook your wire and keep it in place. It's not gonna jiggle around. I really like that. So now that we have our tailgate open, we just need to reconnect our harness then we can tuck that back there where it was and pop our vent back on. We can close up our tailgate.So our next step is to attach our Heim joint. So this is going to connect your spare tire carrier and your tailgate together, making it a single-action carrier or an E-Z Open carrier. So we are just going to place that in that opening right there. Thread our bolt through, then you're gonna take the flat washer and nylon locknut and secure that down. Now while this is open, we'll have easier access to it. So I'm gonna grab my 19 millimeter wrench, my 19 millimeter deep socket, and ratchet and go ahead and tighten that down. So now we can attach the other side to our tailgate and we'll be able to adjust this in just a minute. But what we're gonna do is take the same hardware and secure that down. Gonna tighten that one down as well.So now that our Heim joint is connected, we can go ahead and adjust it to where we want it. So you don't want your carrier to be hitting your third brake light or your tailgate here, but you don't want it pushing out too far. You wanna make sure that it's aligned parallel with your bumper. So if you turn it, this middle portion to the right, it's gonna pull the carrier in. And if we turn it the other way, it's gonna do the exact opposite and push it out. So we wanna make sure that it's as parallel as possible without touching. And that seems like a pretty good point there. And once you are where you wanna be, we can tighten down our jam nut. And you're going to tighten that down with an 18 millimeter wrench. So once you open up your tailgate, your carrier will move with it. So our last step is to put on our spare tire. So this will come with new lug nuts. They will be a 21 millimeter socket. Grab one of those once these are threaded on most of the way. Now we can use a 21 millimeter socket and tighten those down.That's gonna wrap it up for my review and install on the Barricade Trail Force HD Rear Bumper and E-Z Open Tire Carrier combo fitting all 2007 to 2018 JK Wranglers. 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