Craig posted on February 02, 2012 01:21
As time allowed in my schedule over the past year, Grant Mossman has been fabricating a winch tray and solid recovery attachment point. Today was a milestone in that the winch officially went into the bumper, and the bumper is back on the truck.
It's a Ramsey RE12000 worm drive winch, an ARB non-winch bumper, and a Dixon Bate 3.5 ton tow jaw. The Ramsey winch has the winch line enter off-center. This leaves a lot of room on the other side to add a solid Dixon Bate Tow Jaw for recovery and storing the winch hook. The setup is very similar to the Range Rovers used in the Camel Trophy.
Some of the challenges in the project were:
- Stuffing a HUGE winch into such a small space
- Re-locating the oil cooler lines so the winch would clear
- Coming up with a design that would look clean and reflect the traditional/classic look of the truck/bumper
The electrical system in the truck has already been improved to handle the load of a winch (140 amp alternator, Sears Platinum Die-Hard battery, and military battery terminals). All that's left to do is to wire it to the battery, cut the plastic grille to fit around the winch, and spool the Masterpull Superline XD winch line on.
Here are a couple of crummy cell phone pics. I'll take some better one's tomorrow.
