4x4 Bullbars & Rear Bars in Brisbane

What a bullbar actually does to your 4WD

The reasons people buy one are usually obvious enough.

Animal strikes

The big one, and the reason most people out of town won't drive without a bar. A roo at speed will write off the front of an unprotected 4WD and quite possibly leave you stranded a long way from help. A bar takes that hit into the chassis rails instead of your radiator, and gets you home.

Somewhere to mount everything

A winch, driving lights or a light bar, UHF aerials, a sand flag. Once you've got a bar, all of that has a proper home instead of being cable-tied to the grille.

Better approach angle

Most factory front bars hang low and get destroyed on the first decent rut. A properly designed bar tucks up higher and gives you more room before you're pushing plastic into the dirt.

Recovery points that are actually rated

Covered properly further down, but a good bar usually brings rated points with it, which is a genuine safety upgrade over what the factory gives you.

So the front drops. How much depends on the bar and the car, but it's enough to notice, and once it drops a few things follow.

Your headlights point lower. Your approach angle gives back some of what the bar just gained you. The front shocks sit further into their travel, so there's less left before they bottom out. And your caster and camber shift, which shows up eventually as uneven tyre wear on the front.

None of that means don't fit a bullbar. It means fit the right front springs at the same time, or know that you're going to want to shortly.

That's the bit we're actually good at, and it's why we'd rather you bought the bar from a suspension shop than an accessory shop.

What does a bullbar cost?

Most sites won't answer this without a form. These are the supply ranges across what we carry, taken from our own stock rather than plucked out of the air.

Supply only. Fitting is on top and depends on the vehicle, what has to be relocated and whether a winch is going in. Prices move with promotions and the spec, so ring us for a number on your exact car.

What else to budget for

• A winch, if you're having one. It changes which bars are on the table and adds real weight at the front.
• A wheel alignment shortly after the bar goes on. Cheap, and it's the sensible way to settle any change at the front rather than jumping straight to new coils.
• Sensor and camera relocation on newer vehicles, plus looms and adapters where the bar needs them.
• Rated recovery points, if the bar you choose doesn't come with them.

What you're actually paying for

In our experience a cheaper bar is built cheaper, and it shows up in places you don't see in a photo.

• Packaging and protection in transit. Cheaper bars arrive with less of it, and a bar that turns up damaged is a delay before it's a discount.
• Customer service. When there's a problem, there's often nobody at the other end. That falls back on whoever fitted it.
• Instructions and cutting templates. Limited or vague, which turns a straightforward fit into a guess with an angle grinder.
• Powdercoat. This is the one people notice a year in. Cheap coating can be brittle and start rusting after a short period of ownership.
• ADR compliance and Australian airbag testing. Not optional and not something to take on trust. It's a big part of why a bar costs what it costs.

The honest differences between them

Both are good bars. They're built to different price points and they behave differently on the car, so here's what we'd actually tell you across the counter.

MCC 4x4

A genuinely good option at the cheaper end, and the Falcon especially. Widest vehicle coverage of anything we carry, and it gets you into a properly compliant looped bar for a lot less money.

Three things to know before you buy one.

• Recovery points aren't standard. They're a separate purchase and you want them fitted at the same time as the bar. Recovery points can't easily be added later, so this is the one to get right up front.
• Fog lights are sold separately too. Easier, because you can just pick the bar package that includes them when we install, or add them down the track.
• It usually sits in front of the bumper, which means a bumper cut. Not always, but usually. Two things follow from that: if your front bumper is already damaged, an MCC bar may not cover the damage, and the bar tends to be bulkier than an Offroad Animal or PSR, which matters if your garage is tight.

Offroad Animal

Australian designed and engineered, and it shows in the detail. Slimline for the protection you get, and noticeably lighter than a lot of mass-produced bars of the same size, which matters given everything else on this page about weight.

• Designed around modern vehicles. Built to work with parking sensors, cameras, radar cruise and autonomous braking rather than fight them.
• Zinc plated then powdercoated as standard, which is the answer to the rust problem further up this page.
• Rated recovery points included on the Toro, along with high-lift jacking points, so there's less to buy separately.
• Winch fitment is properly thought through, with a built-in cradle rather than an afterthought.
• Predator or Toro. Predator for the customisable stealth hoop or hoopless look, Toro for the cleaner no-loop front. Both take a winch.

PSR

Built for people who genuinely use the vehicle off road. The Ambush comes in single hoop and low single hoop, and it's another slim option if garage clearance or approach angle matters to you.

So which one?

If budget is the deciding factor, the MCC Falcon with recovery points added at the same time is a solid buy and we'll happily fit it. If you want the lighter, slimmer bar with more included and a better finish long term, that's Offroad Animal. If you're hard off road, look at PSR.

Tell us which way you're leaning and what the car has to fit through, and we'll tell you straight.

Do I need a full bullbar, or something smaller?

We'd rather sell you the right one than the big one, so here's the honest breakdown.

A full bullbar makes sense if

• You do country or outback kilometres, especially early morning or around dusk
• You want a winch. A winch needs a bar built to carry it, and there's no shortcut around that
• You're touring or towing and want the front of the car protected when you're a long way from a repairer
• You want rated recovery points as part of the package

A no-loop or alloy bar is probably enough if

• You're mostly on sealed roads around town
• You want protection and somewhere to put driving lights or an aerial, without the loops standing up in front of the bonnet
• You don't want the extra weight, and you'd rather not touch your front springs
• You like the look but not the commitment

The weight difference is the real story. An alloy bar sits well under the weight of the steel equivalent, and dropping the loops takes more off again, so there's less change at the front and less chance you need new coils to hold the nose up. That's why plenty of people who only ever see bitumen are better off with one.

And the other bits

Side steps and rock sliders are two different things wearing similar shapes. Steps are for getting in and out. Sliders are structural and are there to take the vehicle's weight on a rock. If you're going off road properly, you want sliders, not steps.

Rear bars and wheel carriers get overlooked until someone reverses into a stump. A wheel carrier also gets the spare off the underside of the car, which frees up room and means you're not lying in the mud to get at it. Fair warning though, that's more weight again, this time behind the rear axle, and it will affect how the back sits.

Looped or no loop?

No loop bullbars

No-loop bars are popular for good reason. They look sharper, they're lighter, and without the loops sitting up in front of the bonnet you get a better approach angle and a clearer view over the front of the car.

They still take a winch and still give you mounting points for lights, so you're not giving up the practical side of it.

What you are giving up is coverage. There's less structure standing between an animal and your bonnet, headlights and windscreen. For town driving and lighter off road work that's a reasonable trade. For dawn runs on a country highway, less so.

Looped bullbars

The loops are there to catch what a lower bar would let through, and to keep it out of the windscreen. If you're regularly on roads with animals on them, that's what you're buying.

You pay for it in weight, in a bit of visibility, and in looks if that matters to you.

Steel vs alloy?

Steel

Steel is what most bars are made of, and for most people it's the right answer. It takes a hit and deforms rather than shattering, it's straightforward to repair, and it's the cheaper option.

The cost is weight, and that weight is the thing that lands on your front springs.

Alloy

Alloy bars are noticeably lighter, which means less effect on your ride height, less strain on the front end, and a bit less fuel used over the life of the car.

They cost more up front. They're harder to repair properly if you do connect with something, because welding alloy well is a specialist job.

Steel vs alloy, our viewOur opinion

If you're already close to your front axle limit, or you've got a heap of other gear on the car, the weight saving on an alloy bar is worth paying for. If the car is otherwise fairly standard and budget matters, steel and a set of front springs to suit will usually get you a better outcome for the money.

That's our opinion rather than a rule. Bring us the vehicle and what you want to do with it and we'll give you a straight answer for your situation.

Recovery points, and why the factory tie-downs aren't one

This one matters more than any styling decision on this page, because it's the one that can hurt somebody.

The hooks and loops your vehicle came with are transport tie-downs. They're designed to hold a stationary car down onto a trailer or a ship. They are not designed for the shock loads that come with a recovery, and they can fail under one.

When a tie-down lets go mid-recovery, it doesn't just drop. It comes back down the strap at whoever is standing near it. That's how people get badly hurt on what looked like a routine bog.

Rated recovery points are engineered and tested for exactly that load, and they're designed to feed it into the chassis rather than into a bracket that was only ever holding the car still.

Plenty of the bars we sell have them from the factory, which is one less thing to sort out later. Ask us and we'll tell you which ones do.

Compliance, airbags and the legal side

Modern 4WDs decide whether to fire the airbags based on how the front of the car crumples in a crash. Bolt something to the front that changes that, and you've changed the calculation.

That's why a bullbar has to be designed and tested for your specific make, model and build. A bar engineered for your vehicle is built to let the car behave the way the manufacturer intended in a frontal impact.

It's also why "close enough" isn't. A bar off a similar model, or one modified to fit, is a genuine safety problem rather than a paperwork one.

What else it affects

Parking sensors, front cameras, adaptive cruise radar and the washer jets all live in the front of a modern car. A properly engineered bar accounts for them. Depending on the vehicle, sensors may need relocating into the bar, and that's a normal part of the job rather than a sign something's wrong.

Weight, and your front axle rating

Your vehicle has a front axle rating, and everything you bolt to the front counts towards it. A heavy bar plus a winch plus lights adds up faster than people expect.

If you're building the car up properly, it's worth knowing where you sit. That's a conversation about GVM upgrades as much as bullbars, and we're happy to have it.