Front Bumper, Guard, and Warn Winch
The time had finally come to replace the monsterous bumper on the front of my Jeep. It appeared to be a retrofitted bumper designed to a full size picked that had been retrofitted.
It was built around a single 7" tube with a integrated tube guard and weighed nearly 100 pounds. Simply put, it was an eyesore and stuck out too far from the front.
I decided to replace it with a Tomken stubby front bumper. In addition, since I was going to be installing a winch, I also installed a Tomken winch mount and brush guard. The Tomken stubby bumper and winch plate weighed at 65 pounds compined which saved about 35 pounds over the existing bumper.
This is important since the Warn winch would add 86 pounds to the overall weight of the front end.
Like most projects, I started by removing the offending part. In this case, it was very easy as there were only four bolts holding the bumper to the frame.
Since I ALWAYS use an anti-seize products on ALL fasteners, the bolts came out with little fuss.
I then placed the Tomken bumper on the frail rails and dropped in the top two bolts to temporarily hold it in place. I was really hoping that this project would be a *simply* bolt-in; however, there were a number of things that had to be tweaked.
As you can see in the thumbnail, the mounting tabs are apparently for a universal fit. They stuck out too far from the frame and would have to be cut down.
If you plan on do much customization work on a vehicle, then there are certain power tools that you cannot be without. One of these is a nice, small angle grinder. Using my Dewalt 4 1/2" grinder, I was able to cut off the protruding corners of the mounting tabs and grind them smooth in a matter of minutes.
The same task would have taken considerably longer using only a hacksaw and metal file.
Since the front bumper could be used as a pulling point if I ever got stuck (or for towing), it could potentially be under a LOT of stress. To help alleviate some of this, I welded a couple "U" channel steel pieces into the front frame rails.
This was very easy to do and the end result is a VERY solid mounting point for the front bumper. And, since I would be mounting the Tomken winch plate, this gave me a great tie-in for the winch.
The only downside to this is having to drill new holes. Not a problem ... just make sure that you have a good set of drill bits.
Once I had the front bumper held in place, I placed the winch plate on top of the frame rails to see if it lined up. Unfortunately, it did not!
It looked like the original owner removed the original front frame plate and moved it back a couple of inches to make room for they huge bumper that I removed. Because of this, the Tomken winch plate holes didn't line up.
Since I already had the drill out, I went ahead and marked where I thought the holes should go and drilled new mounting holes.
As I mentioned above, one of the two holes went through my added frame brace. It is worth noting that I touched up all of my grinding, welding, and drilling with POR-15 to match the rest of the Jeep frame.
Once I was sure of the winch plate location, I bolted my new Warn HS9500i winch to the plate and lowered everything on to the frame rails and bolted it into place. Next, I bolted a roller fairlead to the winch plate, pulled the winch cable through it, and attached a snatch block tot he end. The final product looks extremely nice and is VERY rugged. You can really see in the photos to the right how tightly the bumper and winch are tucked into the front of the Jeep. It looks great and allows an incredible approach angle. All in all, it's a good afternoon project if you don't have to do any of the extra grinding, welding, and drilling.
For what it's worth I installed dual Optima Red Top batteries to handle the extra load from the winch. If you are interested in how I did it, check out my dual batteries page.
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The time had finally come to replace the monsterous bumper on the front of my Jeep. It appeared to be a retrofitted bumper designed to a full size picked that had been retrofitted.
It was built around a single 7" tube with a integrated tube guard and weighed nearly 100 pounds. Simply put, it was an eyesore and stuck out too far from the front.
I decided to replace it with a Tomken stubby front bumper. In addition, since I was going to be installing a winch, I also installed a Tomken winch mount and brush guard. The Tomken stubby bumper and winch plate weighed at 65 pounds compined which saved about 35 pounds over the existing bumper.
This is important since the Warn winch would add 86 pounds to the overall weight of the front end.
