This winter one of my projects is gonna be a new winch bumper for my Tracker. I wanna keep the mounting very clean, and tucked up, to keep as much approach angle as possible. I dont really want the whole thing hangin out in front of the grille, so i was thinking about different ways i could possibly mount the winch so that its still protected but almost a hidden style mounting.  Im still working out how i want to incorporate the winch plate into the bumper. My trucklet has a 2" body lift, so there is a pretty good sized space under the grille and between the frame rails. Im thinkin one of the winches im considering, or at least a good portion of it, would fit into that space. A couple of the winches im thinking about using would be something similar to a Warn VR8000,or a Smittybuilt XRC8.

So my question is; would it be OK to mount this style of winch, feet first or upside down? That way the winch plate would be either the top or front of the bumper. I would obviously make some provision to protect the underside of things in that case. I think there are a few commercial bumpers that use this type of mounting for other trucks.

What kind of drawbacks or problems might i need to consider with this type of mounting?

On several of the ARB winch bumpers, the winch is mounted "feet first" so that the cable passes between the feet of the winch making for a very strong mount - so I see no reason why you should not do the same.

Given the fact that ARB designs their product to accomodate the WARN winch and will supply, install & warrant it with the winch, I'd like to believe that engineers at WARN have been consulted during the design process, and I would not hesitate to use that in a bumper of my own construction - in fact - I have studied ARBs design with a view to copying it - not for production purposes, but because they don't market a bumper that fits the GV, so I can't buy one.

Anyway - Andy from WARN will be along soon - let's hear what he thinks.

Mounting behind a bumper or feet first would probably be the strongest way to do it as stated.

In fact it puts less stress on the whole winch that way, since you are pulling straight into the housing, not placing any shear effect on the winch frame, bolts or mounts.

Access to the Free Spool lever has to be considered. 

ARB's installation instructions show you how to "clock" the free spool lever on a WARN winch so that it is accessible through a hole in the top of the bumper.

Still needs to be considered, but yes clocking helps.

Ive only ever seen pictures of the ARB setup, and never anything really detailed about how they provide access to controls, etc.
I like the idea of mounting feet first, for the reasons that have been brought up. I would think too, that it would put less strain on things and make for a stronger mount.

This is really my first time building a winching setup, so i appreciate the input and other points of view.

Some things i was wondering about too, were things like how it would affect gearbox lubrication, or if there were any provisions to drain moisture, and that kind of stuff And if maybe there would be certain models that would be better for this type of application?

Maybe im just over-thinking things, i dont really know.

As a few of you pointed out, ARB's bumpers do required the winch to be mounted feet-forward, and you do need to reclock the clutch end housing so access to the clutch lever is available in such a situation. So long as the rope is still coming off of the bottom of the drum, you should be OK with the feet-forward orientation.

We do not recommend mounting the winch upside-down. I'm told the drain channels for the winch motor will not line up properly.


- Andy

Good to know, thanks.
 
So upside down is out. Now i need to look further into the feet forward mounting style.

Let it be known, make sure you have easy access to lift the winch directly into the spot you are mounting it.  If you have to wiggle the winch around or do any sort of creative positioning and you are NOT running rope a winch gets really heavy really fast.  Every time I have to put my winch back in the bumper I spend quite a while cursing at it.

aaaahhh - how I would handle that is remove the bumper, deal with the winch & then refit the bumper - at least that's how my design works.

On the ARB bumper I was using as a pattern - there is a removable lower panel, it's cosmetic more than anything else, and once that panel has been removed you can unbolt the winch & lower it very easily - although I can see something like a transmission jack being a great asset.