designing & building custom winch mounts - front & rear

[jesusgatos]

Now that I've got my chassis back, it's time to mount the pair of winches that I picked up a while ago.

Planning on installing one up front, but I don't have any of the stock winch extensions and I'm building a custom grill to work with the A3 hood and intercooler, so I'm hoping that I'll be able to tuck the winch in a little bit tighter using some custom mounts. Will probably end up making a custom front bumper too. Would like to mount the second winch between the rear framerails, right in front of the rear bumper/crossmember. Looks like there's plenty of room to tuck it up in there, will just need to cut out the stock pintle reinforcing strap.

Designing and fabricating these mounts is no big deal, but there are a lot of people on here who have a lot more heavy winching, rigging, wrecking and recovering experience than me and I'd like to get some input on a few points before I get too far into this.

1) Know that there are at least a few people who have installed rear-mounted winches, and would love to see any pics that might be floating around.

2) Am also wondering about the ideal orientation. Kinda remember reading something about being able to re-index some of the winch components in order to adapt them to different applications.

3) Am planning on adapting both of these winches to hydraulic power (already have a transfer-case-mounted PTO and a 5-ton hydraulic pump). Would like to talk about that - what kind of pumps I might want to use, how best to adapt them to the winches, etc.

More interested in figuring out the best way to do all this, so any and all questions/comments/concerns are welcome. Thanks in advance.

 

[gimpyrobb]

Some info sent in a PM.

 

[clinto]

1. I can't get over how good your frame looks! That's inspiration right there. Few Deuce owners have gone that far.

2. Nice transfer case crate!

 

[quickfarms]

What do your neighbors think of the frame sitting in the driveway?

 

[jesusgatos]

Probably that it looks better than it did when it was sitting there halfway disassembled for six months, waiting to go get sandblasted and painted.

 

[jesusgatos]

helpful posts
gringeltaube's dimensions for stock winch mount (front)
complete deuce winch mounting bolt list

 

[jesusgatos]

Started working on the front winch mount. Used the dimensions that gringeltaube posted on steelsoldiers. Right now the winch and the front bumper are both in the stock location. But since I have to build a custom front grill to work with the A3 hood and intercooler, and am going to convert the winch from PTO to hydraulic-power, am trying to figure out if I can pull the winch//bumper in any tighter. Kinda tough because I don't have a stock setup here to pull dimensions from. If anybody with anybody has any pics or dimensions, that would be really[/img] helpful. Am particularly interested in clearance between the winch and radiator, winch and front bumper, PTO driveshaft and whatever it's close to, etc.

 

[spicergear]

Great looking mount! You'll EASILY be able to bury the winch in the rear. I've nested the 10K Garwood under an M715 and nobody knew it was there. Also a 20K under the rear of a deuce.

 

[jesusgatos]

If anybody with anybody has any pics or dimensions, that would be really helpful. Am particularly interested in clearance between the winch and radiator, winch and front bumper, PTO driveshaft and whatever it's close to, etc.

Could really use some help here. Anybody? Would also like to get some dimensions for the rear winch mount. Need to know how much room I've got to work with, from the top of the framerails, to 1) the underside of a cargo bed, and 2) the underside of an M109 box. Please and thank you.

 

[runk]

some picture of front winch

Since I have the front sheet metal off, here are some pictures that may help. Looking at the approach angle relative to the front axle, I'm not sure how much you can lower the winch without cutting into your ground clearance. Note that all these pictures are on hard level ground.

There is essentially no clearance between the winch and radiator ! (See all the threads about protecting the radiator from the winch when working on either...)

 

[runk]

and some more mounted winch pictures

more...

 

[jesusgatos]

Thanks! Those pics are great. Understand that there's really no room to move the winch any further back, and wasn't really thinking about lowering it, but what about pulling the front bumper back a little bit, so it sits closer to the winch? Was thinking about replacing the hawse-type winch guide brackets with a custom-built roller-style fairlead and leverl-wind setup, and probably a custom-built front bumper too. But would be really helpful to know what kind of clearance there is between the winch and the front bumper using the stock winch mounts.

 

[runk]

winch with bumper pictures

OK, some winch pictures with the bumper. Not a lot of space between the bumper and winch, but you could probably gain 3-4 inches if you did a better job of integrating the winch, guides, and bumper.

 

[jesusgatos]

Awesome. Thanks again. Really appreciate the help. On the left side, how much room is there between the back/bottom edge of the bumper and the front cover-plate for that drive-gear housing on the front left side of the winch?

 

[runk]

The horizontal distance from the rear of the bottom bumper flange to the bottom front of the drive gear housing is 2 1/4", or to a bolt head 2". But, the gear housing is vertically above the bottom flange and at an angle (bottom sticks out furthest), so I don't think that would be the first thing you would hit if you just moved the bumper straight back, although it would end up inside the "C" of the bumper and the first step in any service would be "remove front bumper".
The first interference would appear to be the lower stiffening rib on the guides (both left and right sides) to the upper flange of the bumper, at about 2 1/2". If you clearanced the rib or dropped the bumper a little lower, you would come up hard against the upper portion of the gear housing cover plate with the top flange at about 3". It looks to me like the bottom flange would still clear the bottom of the gear housing at 3", and there is room within the "C" of the bumper for it.
Of course, any good dent in the bumper, and I would be worried about cracking the (cast aluminum or iron ?) gear case. It is interesting that there is about 2 1/2" to 3" of clearance at all points from the bumper to the winch.
Note that my lower bumper flange is about 1/4" deeper then the upper, although the upper sticks out (back) further at some of the angles around the winch "cut-out".

 

[jesusgatos]

OK, thanks a bunch. I'm not too concerned about those winch guide plates, and I've taken some measurements of the angle of that gear housing, so knowing the horizontal distance from the back edge of the bumper to the gear housing is really helpful. Not sure I'm following you about the depth of the upper/lower flanges though. Mind clarifying?

 

[runk]

After writing a bunch, I decided to try a sketch. I'm an engineer, and the program I chose was PowerPoint, that is just really, really sad.... But Autocad sucks for not to scale stuff, and I need to get back up to speed with SolidWorks, and just need to start playing with Goggle's sketch....

So maybe these will confuse things more. They are supposed to be sketches of a cross section. I took a couple of more measurement, but they should match the above measurements.

 

[jesusgatos]

runk, I love you. Thanks! So we can pull the bumper back 3" if the interfering parts of the winch guides are modified/removed?

 

[rchalmers3]

JG, after wrestling a few times with the winch cable and the heavy chain with hook, I am glad to have some space for flopping that cumbersome stuff around!

Perhaps you should operate the set up the way it is before making it better.

Rick

 

[jesusgatos]

Sound advice, but don't really have that option. Don't any kind of winch mounts, so have to build something. Might not get it right the first time, but am not afraid to take a shot. Will most likely be designing/building a custom front bumper, roller fairlead, and tensioning setup at the same time, so tjese measurements are really just helpful to have for reference, to establish some kind of baseline.