Winch installed
I've wanted a winch for a LONG time. I could just never justify the purchase. I'm still not sure I can justify the purchase, but I made it anyway. AutoZone had the Warn VR EVO 10-S for darn near dealer cost from what I understand talking to a vendor on that other forum. Prices of everything are going up and this was nearly $200 off MSRP. I've not gone on a couple of trails because solo wheeling is generally not advised. That coupled with my kids getting older and being able/interested in camping, I figured if I was going to get a winch that I needed to get one I was confident would work when I needed it.
I ruled out Harbor Freight and all the Amazon special winches. Brands like ComeUp are just too expensive. That left a handful of choices that ultimately came down to Smittybilt or Warn. The Warn was a little more expensive than the Smitty, but I found more reports of the Smitty failing than I did for the Warn. Probably a result of more people owning the Smittybilt, but regardless. I found an article a jeep forum of a guy who owned a Smittybilt x20 10k and replaced it with a Warn VR EVO 10-s. Not super common to find something like that on the exact models that you're considering. The fit/finish side by side pictures showed an obvious attention to detail on the Warn that indicated it was produced with just a bit more QA. I've always viewed Warn as the gold standard in winches. I know this is their lower level model and not a Zeon winch, but I was set on the Warn. Buy once, cry once.
Winch arrived 2 days later.
But the fairlead obviously wasn't going to work.
Thankfully, the ARB bumper came with
almost everything I needed to relocate the control box. That saved me another ~$85.
But first, I had to figure out the fairlead situation. I started by Googling the problem and found that this is fairly common on ARB bumpers. The most common suggestion is to use either an offset fairlead. The second most common suggestion was to use a roller fairlead and use poly rollers. Ok, so let's check those options out!
Offset fairleads are basically available from 3 manufacturers: Warn, Factor55 and Aries. The Aries as listed as "light duty use" and the fact that it was only $45 compared to the other two at more than twice that cost. I found the Warn on the Walmart website for $95, but no mention of how thick either of the other two are. Since the fairlead mount is fairly recessed into the bumper, winching at an extreme angle would cause the rope to rub on the bumper. Not good for the rope. So I called Warn to see how thick the offset fairlead was and was told that it was 1" thick. The standard thickness for a fairlead (at least it seems that way). I then asked if they had any kind of trade in option since the one that came with it obviously wasn't going to work with my bumper. The guy asked what bumper I had and suggested that I contact ARB since "they use Warn products all the time in their bumpers."
So I called ARB. Their customer service really is top notch. They sell an adapter that pushes the fairlead out and up. This both places the fairlead in the correct location to clear the bumper, but also pushes it further out to help clear the bumper on either side. They gave me the part number and I was off to find the part.
ARB Hawse Fairlead Spacer Kit - 3500600
Truck Brigade is fairly active on several truck forums and instagram. The best price I could find online was $117 + either tax or shipping. I reached out to them on IG and got a quote for $110 to my door.
While I waited, I decided to try to polish my bumper before mounting the control box. Before I could start that though, I had to remove the LED pods from the bumper. Top of the image is the 'before' pic. The middle is one try polishing by hand and the last is after two additional passes with the orbital buffer. Meguiars Ultimate Compound was used. The sponge I used for the had polish and the pad used for the buffer were both solid black afterward. I think a more aggressive compound followed by a good polish could have made it much better, but this was good enough for now.
I hadn't seen a reflection in that powder coat in years.
I am normally pretty slow to install parts after they arrive. But I've been talking to a group about running Musterground Road on Saturday at 11am. It's about a 2 hour and 15 minute drive from home, so I'd need to leave by 9:00AM to be there on time. So after dinner on Friday night, I set out to install the winch. Oh, and did I mention that there was a 99% chance of rain on the trail...which has a decent amount of red clay?
Dang thing is heavy! Thankfully, I didn't have to remove the bumper. After spooling out the rope some, I was able to squeeze it in through the lower bumper skid plate piece. Thing was heavy though. I had to get my wife to help lift it up and hold it in place to get the mounting bolts installed.
On a side note, installation is pretty straight forward and instructions really aren't needed. That said, I was surprised at how lacking the directions were. Nothing on how to clock the feet to fit certain applications (i.e. the ARB), or anything else for that matter. It was basically a picture of how to mount the fairlead and winch to the bumper and showed how to arrange the washers and lock washers. That's it! Didn't even have any words...
Here's the ARB spacer kit before putting on the cover, which is just a black piece of steel that helps to spread the load.
I got everything wired up - at least I thought - and the winch wouldn't spool in either direction. Ok, something isn't hooked up right, so I doube checked every connection and found a ground wire that I hadn't hooked up. The problem was that it wasn't long enough to hook it up where it "should" go. I also couldn't mount the control box because the mounting hole distance was different between the bracket that came with the bumper and the control box. It was 11:30 and the garage is under my son's room. So this is where I had to stop for the day.
Not a big deal. All I had to do was make a new ground wire and drill out the bracket. As long as I got started by 8AM, I should have no problem getting out the door by 9. The connectors I had on hand were either for a larger gauge wire than I had or were too small to fit the post on the winch. So I ran the ground that came on the control box to a bolt on the inside of the bumper (which hadn't worked the night before) and made a longer ground cable that would reach the post on the winch.
The good news was that the winch worked! The bad news was that I'd be at least 30 minutes late to the trailhead and still had to put the lower part of the bumper back on.
The control for the winch is wireless, so I left it connected to charge. I also just ran the winch rope to the factory tie down point until I figure out a better way. I also lost one of the specialty nuts that came with the bumper while trying to fit it back inside the hole. At this point, I was definitely too late to make it and was frustrated at the whole situation. So I left the house for a bit. I found the nut when I got home and got everything buttoned up.
I still need to do the initial unspool and re-spool of the winch, but I'm happy with how it turned out. Just disappointed that I didn't get the truck dirty.