Stealth winch install complete!

I've had my winch from Dave at Bits4Vits sitting about for a month or so now while I accumulated various bits and bobs and routed cables, fuses and isolators etc. I finally got stuck into the physical winch install Thursday night and got it finished off Yesterday morning in time for a test!

My thoughts were, I don't want to cut the steel body - success, I don't want to modify anything - success, and I want to retain as much of the bumper as possible, maybe just have a small hole for the fairlead - success, but I ended up using the big roller fairlead not a stainless loop so it is quite big. I also had to cut and fold back a bit of the grill to allow the clutch handle to be accessed

Spot the winch?


As it turned out the ORA winch plate was much deeper and wider than my little Tmax EW6500 so I could mount it a bit further back. I set about chopping it up and thought, I might as well move the winch back as much as possible. without the fairlead being behind the bumper obviously.

I removed the front section of the ORA plate so it's basically flush with the mount points on the right and left hand side. I wanted to mount the winch about 5-10mm from the radiator so I decided to extend the plate backwards.





I ended up cutting the vertical section off the angle iron that I'd welded on the rear of the plate as the extra 5mm came out of the winch to rad clearance and I didn't want it that close - it served no purpose either it just looked good sitting against it nice and flush.

As you can see, I also drastically narrowed the fairlead mount bit, it was almost double the width of my fairlead! It's also slightly off centre as the winch motor is bigger than the gearbox and I didn't want to move my power steering hoses for the sake of less than 20mm. I also rotated the handle that engages and disengages the drum, this was a doddle, just a case of removing the 2 bars linking the two halves to the drum, and removing a few small cap heads, rotating and bolting back together, the hardest part was getting the nylon bearings on either end of the drum to behave on assembly, but then I realised they were notched and one went one way

The EW6500 winch fitted without leaving a nats nut of room between the ORA plate and the body above it. The rear to bolts had to be installed with the plate off the car completely since they were sitting over the chassis cross member.

Sadly due to the shape of the entry hole to get the dam thing in it wouldnt fit once plate and winch were bolted together, I couldn't install it from the back either. I ended up undoing the body mounts at the front and lifting the body off the chassis about an inch or more to give the room to work comfortably - bit of a job, bit its done right, and its exactly what I wanted. I've managed to get away with 2 small cuts to bumper on cross bar that the number plate fastens to just so the rollers can stick out, without that on it all sits completely behind the standard bumper thus no cuts to the lower air scoop which provides air to the RAD.

The numberplate is normally mounted over the fairlead to hide it a bit from preying eyes and there is a third tapped hole to the drivers side so I can mount it off centre when I'm heading out.

Happy days.

Bloomin tidy. I like that

Nice neat install

Dave

That looks really tidy very well done mate

As said, a very tidy installation indeed .....

Looks very good!

I took some measurements today to see if I can do it too, but it seems impossible.
The dimensions of the winch are 470x160x205mm, and there are no more than 100mm between the radiator fan and the bumper...

Sounds like you have air-con, in which case there won't be enough room to do it as neatly as this.