I recently bought a winch on sale from a place called harbor freight. The winch is made from a company called Chicago Electric.
Harbor Freight Tools - Quality Tools at the Lowest Prices
The total cost was only 329.00. I even includes a 1/4 inch plate tray!
I have wanted one forever but the pricing was just to costly for me. I have a stock brush guard and did not want to have to install a bulkier bumper with a winch tray so, I went down to the local structural steel store and bought 10 feet of 1 inch solid square steel. I was looking for 1/4 inch square tube steel but they didn't carry it so solid steel it was.
I decided that the best mounting location would be to the outside of both sides of the frame. The major obstacle was the bumper. I cut a square hole it the lower part of the bumper with a right angel grinder. (I had already removed the plastic cover from the steel portion of the bumper) There were a couple of brackets along the outside of the frame that need to be shortened just a tad that I also used the grinder to reduce the size. I used the existing holes that the brush guard was being held by but, increased the hole size to 1/2 inch. I also added another 1/2 inch hole farther back. (See pic)
The rest was pretty simple. The tray that came with the winch was then bolted down to the steel rods and the electrical lines were installed.
I was dying to try it out and see how sturdy it was, took it out back hooked it up to a very big tree and winched it up. It worked perfect...picked the LR right off it's front tires like it was a toy.
I have included some pics.
Anthony
