Mounting winch to standard bumper bar

Afternoon all,
I've got a small ATV winch I intend to discreetly mount on the front of my Td4, inside the standard bumper. Its only max. pull of just over 1100kg so nothing crazy, but it's available at no cost and will still provide some pulling power should I need it.

I'm interested to know a bit more about the OE bumper bar, behind the plastic bumper. Does anyone know the thickness and make up, is it box section, or just a flat sheet? From what I've seen it looks like it's only attached to the chassis by 1 stud each side?

Of course I could pull the bumper off to look but I don't have too much free time at the mo. So if anyone knows or has their bumper off, I'd be interested to hear from you.

In an ideal world, I'd like to mount the winch directly to the standard bumper bar, with a steel spreader plate to disperse the load, but would need to beef up the attachment points to the chassis.

Dunno if that pic is any help.

Its a '99 L series - don't know if your facelift is different.

The brackets on top of the bumper are for mounting the A Bar and poke through the plastic.

Yeah that looks similar to what I've seen on Google. Do you still have the bumper stripped down like that or is it an old photo?

Its an old photo I'm afraid and I can't for sure remember how the bumper fixes to the chassis. I don't know if you can blow that pic up, but this is a blown up pic of the mount area....



IIRC there are 4 bolts on each of those brackets securing it to the chassis, but I'm not sure how it fixes to the bumper cross piece - I presume its welded.

Actually, looking at this thread, there's 6 bolts on each side...

https://www.landyzone.co.uk/land-rover/budget-winch-mount-build-lot-of-pics.288383/

Thanks for all the info. This picture appears to show the back of the bar, with the feet removed. It looks like although they're attached to the rail with 4/6 bolts, the bar is only attached with one bolt or stud.



Looking like it might be easier to fabricate something like in the thread you linked. Though I'm tempted to get hold of another spare bar and see what I can do before removing my bumper.

The crash bar isn't strong enough for attaching a winch to. It's pretty stiff, but also made of light alloy. It's job is to protect the rad in light front end knocks, but also absorb low impact energy. I've seen them bend in a couple of inches a light front end knock, which it's designed to do.
For attachment of a winch, you'll need to fabricate a sturdy mount, which a few have done.

Thanks for that, I suspected it would be the case. Seeing what steel we have available before coming up with some ideas.

you need something solid to catch a winch,CNC cutting for fancy...

Brilliant, just the sort of photos I'm after. I assume that's your build? It looks like it's mounted to the original chassis rails using 4 mounting bolts each side?

In the link above to @dave21478 post...

https://www.landyzone.co.uk/land-rover/budget-winch-mount-build-lot-of-pics.288383/

... he has attached recovery points on the winch mount.

As the mount fixes to the chassis with bolts screwing in from the front, and the recovery point is screwed into the mount from the front, are these strong enough for recovery points? In fact is it strong enough to keep a working high power winch fixed to the front of the wagon?

Shame @dave21478 hasn't been around for a year, he was a knowledgeable and practical member.

I did wonder that, as it's not recommended to fit a winch feet backwards because you're relying purely on the strength of the bolts threads rather than the shear strength of the bolts.

Daves mount also had side plates that wrapped around the chassis rails to provide additional fixings, so gets around that issue.

But if @tonytherunner has just the 4 bolts, what looks like the 2 original studs and 2 additional bolts, without issue then I'm sure it'll be adequate for my 1100kg winch.

tonytherunner said:

you need something solid to catch a winch,CNC cutting for fancy...

Click to expand...

I don't suppose you would mind sharing the cad files?

GrumpyGel said:

are these strong enough for recovery points?

Click to expand...

It would depend on the bolts used. An 8.8 bolt is very common, so could assumed as the most likely bolt used. An 8.8 bolt has a tensile strength of over 800 Newtons per mm2 of bolt cross section. From memory a M10 bolt will hold over 600 Kgs, which is more than 2,400 Kgs with 4 of them per side. So I'd say the standard front chassis mounts can take the strain, if enough bolts are used.

Started making the bumper up today. It's going to attach to the standard mounting points using two 90deg brackets.

I've only just found the air con pipe running up/down just inside the left chassis rail though. It sits proud of the rail by about an inch, so will need to work around that.

Tomorrow should see the opening for the fairlead, painted and helpfully a dry fit to test bolt locations.

This is looking very good. Are you planning to add a little lightness? The winch tray looks a little larger than it needs to be - but it'll certainly do the job!

It's not actually as big as it looks and it couldn't really be much smaller because it's got to span the gap between the chassis rails.

I'll get some better photos tomorrow once it's properly mounted but this gives an idea.

The pipe turned out to be the power steering cooling line, fortunately it had enough give to allow the bottom edge to push back to clear the bumper. Will make sure it's still clear when fitting properly but perhaps put something around the pipe just to make sure.

RossRobObey said:

It's not actually as big as it looks and it couldn't really be much smaller

Click to expand...

As long as it sits inside the bumper shell, how big it looks is irrelevant.

It looks good to me, but I think it could do with some triangulated bracing to stop it twisting under load.

This is looking very good - looking forward to the next series of photos!

If I were to add one of these to mine, it would need to be as discrete as possible - and if it were to be effectively invisible until you went off road and needed it to be ready for action, all the better