Video Review & Installation

It's Joe from AmericanTrucks. In this video, we're going over the Barricade Extreme HD Front Bumper with LED Fog Lights, fitting all '09 to '14 F-150s excluding your Raptor models. Now, this is gonna be a great option for any F-150 owner out there that's basically looking to improve the front end of their truck in general. This bumper is going to include some aggressive matte black off-road styling, some heavy-duty steel plate durability, and, of course, include the LED lighting all at budget-friendly price. So, what do we have going on with this bumper?First things first, let's talk a little bit about build quality and what you can expect from Barricade with this guy right here. Now, this is going to be made out of heavy-duty 5/32-inch cold rolled steel plate. Now, we're gonna get this side by side next to the factory stuff in just a second here and really point out the differences. But right off the bat, you can see this is not only a huge styling upgrade with that black powder coating, but that cold rolled steel plate that's going to offer you a bunch of extra durability over the factory plastic stuff as well.Another thing I really like about this design is on the ends here, you can really see just how much this tapers up. And that's designed to help you out with approach angles, which you need in any off-road situation. This does a much better job than the factory front bumper at opening up some clearance in front of the front tires.Now, this is gonna keep a few features from that factory front bumper. You can see we have pretty threaded inserts right here in the middle. If you do live in a state with a front plate requirement, that is going to allow you to mount that up with no drilling whatsoever. I think that's a really nice touch. Also, right here on the lower portion, you can see this has cutouts and relocation brackets, including the kit to relocate your tow hooks. So if you have that option, which this truck is not, you'll be able to keep that feature. And I'll show you what that's gonna look like in just a second when we get this installed to our F-150.Now, another thing I'd like to mention here, something that's gonna transfer over from the factory front bumper, this little guy right here. This is a lower grille inlet. If you have an EcoBoost model, that is especially gonna be helpful because that is going to allow you to keep all of the airflow to your intercooler, which is vital on turbocharged vehicles. This bumper kit is also going to include some upgraded fog lighting as well. You can see those on the side here. These are two 5-Watt Cree LED 3-inch light cubes.Now, these are gonna be a huge upgrade over the factory stuff and give a little bit more of a modern LED appearance for the front end of your truck. The color temperature they're gonna put out is about 6,000 K, which is a bright white leaning very, very slightly towards the blue side. These are completely plug and play, and you even get a wiring harness with a switch relay, some connectors, all included in the kit. And they're IP67 waterproof, which means they can withstand a meter of water for 30 minutes, which is more abuse than it should ever see on the front end of your F-150.So if you like the lighting, you wanna take things to the next level, let's talk about this hole right in the middle of the front bumper. That's intended for up to a 20-inch light bar. There isn't one included in the kit with the lighting. However, if you did have one, all the mounting brackets and hardware you need will come included in the kit. And I think that's a nice touch for you F-150 owners out there that like a little bit of extra light output upfront. Now, if you didn't wanna take the whole styling to the next level, of course, Barricade does offer a matching rear bumper that takes a lot of the cues from the front and just brings it to the rear as well. That could really tie your whole truck together.So, next up, let's talk a little bit about pricing. Now, you are getting some extra stuff here with the included LED lighting and just a good bumper overall. And the pricing is gonna reflect that. This is gonna be a little bit more toward the expensive side. It's not the most budget-friendly kit we have on the site. However, if you did wanna save a couple bucks, you could pick this up without the aftermarket lighting and keep a couple of dollars in your pocket. This kit is gonna cost you right around 850 bucks. With all things considered, not too bad of a price to pay from getting that aftermarket lighting and again a solid bumper overall, so, not too bad.So let's get to the good stuff. Let me show you how to get this installed on your F-150, not too bad, no modifications required, no cutting, drilling, nothing like that, gonna be a straight bolt-on. I'm still gonna give it a two out of three wrenches on the difficulty meter. It is a little bit heavy. So, I recommend bringing a buddy along just for helping you lift this thing up onto the mounting brackets. But with that out of the way, it should take you about two hours at most. But without any further ado, let me show you what tools you'll need and how it's done.Tools I use for this install will include a couple of ratchets, sockets ranging from 8-millimeters all the way up to 21-millimeters, 16-millimeter wrench, and then 18-millimeter wrench. So over by the truck, we can start our factory front bumper uninstall. Now, there is one weird consideration that goes into this that I wanna talk about, and that is the fact that this body piece right here, the hood latch and the front bumper, they're all three bolted together. So, we're gonna need a 13-millimeter socket first. We're just gonna unbolt the hood latch from the front bumper, so we can remove it later on.So now that we have those bolts undone, we can move on to our next step, and that is disconnecting our fog lights if you have them. You can see them right here. There's this blue bulb. You got this plug. All you do is pry down on the teeth and push it away. That will unplug right like so. We're gonna do that on the other side as well. Now we could reach down where the grille was and unbolt our bumper. Each frame has a horn on it, and that horn has two 21-millimeter nuts. So you can see one stud right there and another one way down here. We're gonna get those nuts undone on both sides and then remove the bumper. So there there's one, and right there's number two.And we're gonna do the same thing for the other side. Before you loosen this up, make sure you have your knees in the bumper, something like that, because this is the last two nuts holding it off. So now we got all of our hardware disconnected. We should be able to work that out underneath this lip right here with our knees, and then we can remove the bumper. So, now that we have our factory stuff completely removed, we can go ahead and put that aside.The next thing we're gonna do is build up our new Barricade bumper on the table, and then we'll put the two side-by-side and really draw some comparisons between what's different between each front bumper. Now, you can see I have a few things on the table in front of me. The first thing we're gonna install, these little plastic clips right here. These are threaded. They're for front plate. All they're gonna do is drop in these little holes right here. And that's pretty much it as far as those go. If you do live in a state that requires that, they'll be ready for you when we go to put this on. Secondly, these brackets right here, the two in the middle, these are for a light bar. If you do have one, we could throw that in right here. However, this kit doesn't come with one. So, we're gonna skip that, but the brackets you need and all the hardware you need does come included in the kit.Now, the lighting that this bumper does come with, you can see on the outside of the table here, a couple LED cube lights. We're gonna have to install the bracket on those first, and then we can bolt them down to our bumper. So the first thing we're gonna need is the mounting bracket itself. Now, this isn't perfectly symmetrical. You can see this side has a little bit of a notch taken out of it. When that's installed and you give it a 90-degree turn, you want that to be facing forward towards the light. That way you get a little bit of extra upward tilt, kind of, like that basically.But for now, what we're gonna do is take that bracket. Slide it down in between the fins. I'm just gonna vaguely line it up. Now, at this point, you can take one of these small nuts and basically drop it down that slotted fin. Come in with the hardware from the side, go through the bracket into that nut, and then you could tighten it down with the supplied Allen key. And we're just gonna repeat this process with the other light and the other bracket, and then we could drop these into the bumper.So now to install the light to the bumper, we're gonna take the 13-millimeter bolt that comes with it as well as a lock washer that's gonna come up through the bracket like this. And you can see there are a couple notches in that bracket to hold the bolt head still. Then we can come to the bumper, and the first thing you wanna do is push through the cord in whatever of these three slots you want them in. I'm gonna go from the middle and then from the top, I'm just gonna install a 13-millimeter nut. And we're gonna do the same thing over on the other side.So now we have our new bumper completely built up. Before we move back to the truck, now is the perfect time to sit this down next to the factory stuff, put the two side by side, and let you guys really see the differences between both of these front bumpers. Now, the biggest and most obvious difference here is gonna be in the looks department. And what we're doing basically is trading body color in a bunch of ugly old faded plastic in exchange for some aggressive 5/32-inch steel plating, sealed in that black powder coating, which really gives you a sort of stealth fighter, aggressive off-roader look. And it's also going to add a nice layer of protection from the elements over top of that steel.Now, one thing that I noticed once I got these two side by side is just how square this factory front bumper is on the side and how much that is gonna cut into your approach angle, especially when compared to Barricade, which really does have that taper up, giving you a more aggressive approach angle, which is gonna be great for any off-road situation. Now, another huge upgrade between both of these front bumpers, these old factory reflector style halogen GC over here on the factory stuff, we're completely getting rid of those in exchange for some plug-and-play 5-Watt Cree 3-inch LED cube lights, a huge upgrade, gonna add a really nice modern touch to the front end of this truck like I said earlier.Now, there are a few features that do carry over from the factory front bumper to our new Barricade front bumper that are really nice to have. Number one obviously gonna be the front plate mount. You do have those threaded inserts, which is a nice touch. Secondly, our lower grille here. You can see that we have a little bit of grading over it, which I think gives you a more finished touch with the Barricade. But that's especially gonna be a consideration for the EcoBoost models. You want airflow to get to that intercooler, and again having that lower grille there gonna be a huge plus.Another thing we're keeping, tow hooks. You can see our truck is not equipped, but if it was, we have holes cut out in our Barricade to accommodate those, no problem. And, of course, while we were on the table there, I mentioned a 20-inch light bar can fit into this Barricade. That's not a feature at all on the factory front bumper. So, if you do have one of those, it's a nice little bit of an upgrade that goes right into that Barricade front bumper, so a little bit of a difference. Not too big, but that's what we'll wrap it up on. So that's gonna do it as far as differences go between these two front bumpers. We're gonna head back to the truck. We got a little bit of mounting bracket work in our install, and then we can hang this bumper up.So, on the end of our frame rail, you'll see this frame horn. We're basically going to install our mounting bracket right to that. Now, that is gonna go on there like so. And you can see, actually if I take it down right there, there'll be a D for the driver's side. They go on there like so, and from the back, I'm just gonna throw through one of our 18-millimeter bolts, big flat washer, lock washer, 18-millimeter nut, and do the same thing over here. And we'll tighten that down with some 18-millimeter tools. One thing I do wanna mention, this is slotted both ways. So, if you do need some adjustment, later on, you can always come back, loosen this up, make your adjustment, and tighten it back down. And then we can do the same thing over here on the other side.So the next step, if your truck does have tow hooks, these are relocation brackets. What you're gonna do is uninstall the tow hook. Basically install that bracket to the frame rail like so, and this is basically gonna move your tow hook out a little bit to accommodate for the extra depth in our front bumper. Obviously, our truck isn't equipped, but you do have these if you wanna keep your tow hooks, which I would recommend. So now we can go ahead and install our front bumper. I'm just gonna rest it on those mounting brackets and install it using the 16-millimeter hardware in the kit. Now you just wanna make sure your bumper is nice and adjusted and then run through with the 16-mil tools and tighten everything down.So, now before we call this bumper a wrap, which at this point it's fully installed, we gonna do a little bit of wiring for our LED cube lights. Now, it's gonna come with this harness in the kit, and there are a couple of things going on here. Number one, we have our switch. We're gonna have to get this in the cab. We have our waterproof quick disconnects here. These are gonna have to go to the fog lights. We have our ring connectors for the battery terminals, and last but not least, we've got a little bit of a relay here. We're gonna mount this up to a ground, although this is just a mounting tab on here. It doesn't really have to be a ground.Now, we're gonna start at the battery, and the terminals are held on with some 8-millimeter nuts. We're gonna remove those, get our ring connectors installed, and then tighten them back down. And that will give this thing some power. So, starting with negative, 8-millimeter socket, we're gonna round that nut off, and then throw our ring connector on, and reinstall. It's gonna be the same process up here for the positive terminal. And if you wanted to, you could go under this 10-millimeter nut here too. It might be the right way, but it is what it is. Now, our relay, we're gonna put this under this ground right here. It doesn't have to be a ground. It really is just a mounting tab on there, but these are convenient. So we'll go ahead and rip that out and then run it through the relay, which you can see how I have that routed.So now we have two sets of wires we're gonna have to run throughout our engine bay. This guy right here, this is gonna go over to the driver's side. We're gonna run this along the firewall. These two, these are gonna have to plug into our fog lights, so down below the engine and behind our front bumper. Now, one thing I do wanna state, you're gonna wanna run this in a safe spot away from any hot or moving components. Other than that, it's really up to you.So right here is gonna be a good spot for your switch. You can see this wiring harness is basically on a rubber grommet through the firewall. If you go ahead and pull that out, you should be able to reach down there with the switch, feed that through, and that will lead you into the driver's footwell. In the driver's side footwell, you can reach underneath and pull that switch out. It's gonna lead you right about here. You can really stick this wherever you want. You got a little adhesive on the back. But one thing you wanna be sure of is that this isn't tangled up in the pedals, and that is good to go. And the last thing we need to do, crawl underneath our front bumper, plug in our fog lights on both sides, and give them a test.But that's gonna do it for my review and install of the Barricade Extreme HD Front Bumper with LED Fog Lights, fitting all '09 to '14 F-150s excluding the Raptor models. As always, guys, thank you so much for watching. Keep it right here at AmericanTrucks for all things F-150.