To get started I needed to
remove bumper. This wasn't too difficult, just time consuming taking
out all the bolts and removing the lights and my air hose coupler.
My plan was to cut the bumper and fit in a winch plate. This
would save me time and headache versus making my own and I think it
will turn out nicer in the end. Also if I were to make my own I
would need to buy the metal to do it. The winch plate I found only
costs $39.99 so the cost of buying this isn't really a factor. Its a
Harbor Freight winch plate for the Wrangler. To find it, go to
www.harborfreight.com
and do a search by typing in "jeep winch plate" or type in
the item number which is 3444-OVGA. I am skeptical of some Harbor
Freight products, but this winch plate is plenty strong. It is 1/4"
thick, has some universal mounting holes (which I won't use) and has
a very thick finish on it.
I spent a great deal of time taking measurements and thinking
about how high I wanted the winch to sit and how far back. I just
wanted to make sure my plans were right before cutting up the
bumper... This next photo shows the cut and the section that will be
removed. There's quite a bit of weight to that section with the
receiver, so even though I'll be adding a winch plate I don't think
the bumper itself will weigh any more than it did before. This part
of the bumper is 3/16" steel so most of the cutting I did to
both the bumper and 1/4" thick winch plate was with a circular
saw with a metal cut-off wheel. Of course the angle grinder was also
put to good use.
This next one shows how I had to modify the winch plate to fit
with my bumper. Of course, this also took a lot of forethought and
continual trimming a little here and a little there until it fit
perfect.
Here's an inside view of the cut bumper and winch plate.
This is after the welding the two together. You can see that
the winch plate spans the whole length between the mounting
brackets.
Here's another angle to show the 1/4" piece I welded in to
add support underneath the winch. Having the winch sit this low is
also going to make it harder to install the winch mounting bolts -
particularly the front ones. But there is just enough room to get
the bolts in and also get a wrench in there to tighten them.
Then it was time for a test fit on the Jeep. My bumper's
mounting brackets are not adjustable and it fit perfectly snug
before. But anyone that welds knows that the heat can pull metal in
or warp things to a varying degree. It just so happened that now the
bumper was a little "more" snug than before. So snug in
fact, that I had to use a hammer to get it on. All the mounting
holes still lined up great so this wasn't a major issue. I also
realized that I would need to trim a tad bit more off the winch
plate since it was butting up against the front crossmember.
And here is a shot after the adjustments were made and a fresh
coat of paint.
Continue on to Part 2 -
Mounting the Winch |