After rebuilding my winch, it was time to install it onto the car. This proved to be harder than one would imagine. I have always loved the stock look of the Jimny and have not wanted a big metal bumper. Which is generally the route to go when mounting a winch, New metal bumper that supports a winch.
So we had to get a custom winch plate made that works with the facelifted Jb43 stock bumper.
I started off designing my own winch plate, I then very quickly realised this was not a clever thing to do, and I would highly recommend against it. There is ALLOT of force involved when winching and doing recoveries. Using equipment that is homemade and not welded and designed by qualified engineers is asking for trouble. This is when I approached Des-SOl and asked them to design a kit for me. I was more than happy with the outcome.
Once the winch plate arrived from https://des-sol.co.za/ it was relatively easy to install. The beauty about this kit, is that it is a complete bolt-on solution. No drilling or welding into the chassis.
The first step is to get the car up onto the ramps (to save the pack some pain) and remove the front bumper.
Then one simply bolts the winch plate ontop the chassis & recovery points. This is a fantastic feature of this design as it ensures that all forces from the winch & recovery points is spread evenly between the chassis points and the recovery points.
Next step was probably the most difficult. This involved cutting holes IN THE RIGHT PLACE for the recovery points to come through the bumper and stick out. I, unfortunately, did not get any photos of this step as I was concentrating on doing it right. My only advice. Measure twice cut once.. You only have once chance here.
Next step was all the electrical cabling and wiring. I decided to complicate my install and not stick with the stock cables and controller etc. I opted to upgrade all the cables to 4 awg (25mm2) cable, as well as installing a battery bridging relay that allows me to bridge both my batteries together in parallel when winching.
Last that was left was to connect the cables to the actuall winch and test it out.
