Ramsey Pro 8000 into ARB Bumper Installation

[Brody]

Nick (GM4x4Lover) got in touch with me to do this for his wife, Kim. The bumper was off of her XJ and the winch came from Randy's (AirRandy) FJ60 front clip winch mount. There were some parameters: I had to redesign the ARB so that it could be mounted to the rig and then have the winch be able to mount from the underside, something the ARB bumpers weren't designed to do.

The Ramsey Pro 8000 is a huge winch, being the size and weight of most other company's 10k or 12k winches in both dimension and weight. There was very little room to mount the Ramsey in the space between the frame rails. The FJ60 front 'universal mount' used a MileMarker style universal winch plate that had been cut to fit the narrower dimensions for that application, which required some other modifications.

Nick also wanted to lose the rather useless 'wings' under the side of the ARB bumper which jacked the approach angle. Why ARB persists in adding these to their bumpers is a mystery to me as they are really useless and both jack the asthetics and the approach angle up. They are there for strength, but as you will see from the pictures, I was able to add strength and lose the stupid rock catchers with some work. I also cut off the seemingly superfluous 'water wing' fairlead garbage that ARB thinks is some sort of functional piece on their bumpers. I don't know about anyone else, but I have never found any fairlead that works with that piece of junk the way it is intended to work. Either the fairlead roller pins aren't long enough to go through it, or they are too small to work, or the top of the fairlead won't fit inside it, or the bolt holes don't line up on the fairlead mounts if any of the other stuff manages to fit.

Here are the pictures of the bumper and the FJ60 front winch mount as I got them and some of the initial fitment issues. As you can see, the tow point bolts are right in the way of where the winch has to go and the plate is considerably narrower than the ARB dimensions. Access to the bumper mounts for the Cherokee also had to taken into consideration as far as where the winch mounting position was located.

I cut off the underside of the ARB bumper where the winch was going to go and lost the superfluous wings on the side. After determining where the winch needed to go and still allowing access to the frame bolts for the mounting, I reinforced the front section of the bumper with additional plating, and added two pieces of angle on each side(shown tacked into place in the pictures. They are fully welded in the finished product). These pieces of angle are there to allow the winch to be jacked up into place from underneath and will locate the winch so that it can be bolted in. The semi 'fake' tow points are the ARB were also very tweaked and, as with all ARBs, only tack welded in a few spots, making for an exceptionally weak tow point. The ones on this bumper were very bent and needed to be hammered back into shape. When I got them back to where they were supposed to be, I used the angle bracing to reinforce them and fully welded the points for more strength.

[Brody]

The next pictures show the reinforcement I did to the back of the front side of the ARB, location of the angle 'stops', test fitment of the MileMarker universal winch plate, and the strengthening I did to the part of the ARB where I cut the stupid wings off. Looks better already, doesn't it?

[Brody]

Next came the modifying of the MileMarker plate, cutting the top of the ARB bumper to accommodate the winch, removing the tow points and filling the extraneous holes in the front of the bumper. The cable hole on the MileMarker universal plate and the cable hole on the ARB of course didn't exactly line up either. This required mounting the plate, determining where the ARB cable hole needed to be modified (centering the winch) and cutting out the hole in the ARB.

[Brody]

The next thing that had to be done was to add some 1/4" stock to the sides of the MileMarker universal plate. I added the 1/4" stock, welded it on both sides and ground it smooth. I then drilled two holes on both sides for rosette welds to reinforce this. This was then welded to the angle mounting brackets. The first angle location brackets I put in were cut to allow the winch to fit in and to both provide a stop for the winch and a 'sandwich' style mount which will make for a very strong placement.

Since the winch fit into the ARB so tightly, access to the bolts for both the fairlead and the additional front mounts that I drilled through the front of the MileMarker plate was impossible. What I wanted to do to further reinforce the front of the bumper and the winch was to 'through' mount the winch plate through the bumper front, making pull point (force) on the winch the heavier MileMarker plate rather than the thinner bumper stock. I located the mounting holes and welded tow 1/2" nuts (for the fairlead) and two 3/8" nuts (for the plate) to the backside, allowing it to be bolted in from the front side.

Next was cutting out for the clutch knob which got a coupler nut and bolt extension, allowing for easy access. I also had to cut out to allow easier access to the remote plug in. Once this was done and all the holes filled and ground smooth , I had to deal with the fact that the solenoid pack simply wasn't designed to fit this particular application (HAHA...no real surprise). I had to relocate the solenoid pack to a more top of the box location and there wasn't quite enough play in the wires. By carefully tweaking the wires around and running them through the sides of the cover rather than through the top, I was able to get just enough wire to relocate the box....just barely. I filled the extra holes in the cover using some plastic plugs and ABS cement and zip tied the wires in place after using some heat shrink to clean up and protect the connections. The winch now slides up into place from the bottom with little room to spare.

[Brody]

These last pictures show the top cover with the filled holes and the cleaned, primered and finish painted bumper. The winch is held in place with six 3/8" bolts, four on the angled anchors (as it was originally mounted in the FJ 60 mount) plus two additional 3/8" bolts through the front of the bumper and through the 1/4" MileMarker plate, and the two 1/2" bolts that also bolt through the front of the bumper and through the winch plate. In addition to this, I added those two odd little angle tabs seen in one of the other pictures. These both help in locating the winch when it is being jacked into place from the bottom and will help eliminate any side to side movement from a side pull. This ended up being an extremely tight fit and there is probably only 1/8" of play in getting the winch into place.

My thoughts:
Doing a winch install into an ARB other than the WARN winches they seem to be designed for, if it isn't a huge Ramsey Pro, 10k or 12k size winch, it would be a lot less complicated that what I did here. That coupled with the fact that Nick requested that the winch be able to mount from the bottom (which I wholeheartedly agree with having done a few too many winch+bumper ARB style installs before) made for some entertaining factors.

All in all, a fun but slightly complicated project. The end result is a bumper/winch combination I would be happy to have on my own rig and looks almost 'factory'.

[JeffX]

Wow. That's nuts!

I have my Ramsey mounted with the bottom plate facing forward. It's good because it allows the use of a Ramsey-type (http://www.whitescarver.com/albums/GregorysCadillac/IMG_00214.sized.jpg) fairlead and is very simple. It's bad because the winch and solenoid are hard to get to. Recently, I was driving (for god knows how long) with the cover off the remote receptacle. The damn thing is all dirty. The last 2 recoveries I've done, it's been acting up. I need to move the solenoid 'upstairs'.

I've never seen anything like this. Very cool. It seems like it overcomes most of the issues with my setup. When can we see it mounted?

EDIT:

Congrats on the Ramsey winch. I like them a lot.

.

[Brody]

Thanks! I have absolute no idea who made the fairlead and it looked smaller than others that I have used. I mounted a Warn fairlead onto what is left of my ARB and had to drill new holes for that, so I don't know what ARBs idea of a fairlead is.

As far as remounting the solenoid pack, I used the stock mounts on the Ramsey, flatten them out, rebent and flipped them them, bolted the base into the bottom as there is now no longer room to reach the bottom bolts and, using the exact same holes in the mounts, mounted it on top. Like I said, I had to tweak the wires a bit as there is very little slack in them.

I know what you mean on the Ramseys, too. The last one I had was salvaged free from a commercial building demo, was well used at the time (back in 82-83), was mounted on and well used on three different rigs, never had any maintenance done to it, and was working just fine when I sold the 3rd rig. There is a reason that commercial wreckers and tow rigs use RAmsey winches and it sure isn't because anyone gets a deal on them. What they get is a killer winch....

As far as actually seeing it mounted, Nick just has to get out from under his workload for long enough to come pick it up. Right now it is happily living on my creeper. Of course, it is eying LaDawn's Grand Cherokee........

[Patrolman]

Tons of work, but as usual, looks great!

[gm4x4lover]

Thanks pete that looks really good. It took alot more work than i had imagined.

[brian pleasant]

pete,,,,never cease to amaze me . i always thought that all winch fits in winch bumpers, but i was wrong.. we have new front bumper from smittybilt and it was supposed to mount winches but not sure what type i will find out to seee what fits in

[Mporter]

Looks great

[Brody]

We have a new front bumper from Smittybilt and it was supposed to mount all winches but I'm not sure what type fits in it

Brian, you should have pretty good luck with the SmittyBuilt bumper. They are set up for most of the common winches. Sean and I use the SmittyBuilt universal winch plates (which are what is used on their bumpers) about as often as we use the MileMarker universals. They tend to fit most anything. The new SmittyBuilt stuff is pretty nice.

[Chris]

Thanks pete that looks really good. It took alot more work than i had imagined.

Isn't that always the case? It sure is with anything I need done.

Great job as always Pete!

[gm4x4lover]

i always thought that all winch's fit in all winch bumpers

Ya i kinda did too. I just figured the mounting plates were different.

[Rusty]

very cool pete

[TxTau]

Nice job Brody! looks fantastic.

[Brody]

http://www.frontrange4x4.com/forums/images/misc/quote_icon.png Originally Posted by brian pleasant http://www.frontrange4x4.com/forums/images/buttons/viewpost-right.png (http://www.frontrange4x4.com/forums/showthread.php?p=87007#post87007)
i always thought that all winch's fit in all winch bumpers



Ya i kinda did too. I just figured the mounting plates were different.

Most of the so called 'universal winch mounting plates' from various winch companies and from builder supply sources are designed to mount almost all of the popular winches. The notable exception is the venerable 8274, which take a slightly different style of mount. We like to use both the SuperWinch and the MileMarker universal plates as they are well designed, stout, accommodate many different winches, and have the cut out return for the fairlead.

Since the design of the Ramsey Pro 8000 made it so tall, there wasn't room to mount it sideways as ARB designed the Warn style winches to do. What I was working with here was what looked to be a MileMarker universal plate, but it had already been cut down to fit a narrower mount. This required me to weld an extension onto each side and additional mounting plates to mount it under the frame mounting points.

Some of the bumper companies design their winch plates to mount certain makes of winches, others to mount a variety of different makes. Many of popular winches and sizes have the same 'footprint' or bolt pattern, which makes this easy. ARB designed their bumper to primarily fit the Warn winch, but since quite a few brands have the same bolt pattern, many different makes fit. Both DeMello and Slee designed their bumper primarily around the Warn, too.

[1freaky1]

That turned out pretty nice Pete, does look like factory made.

[JeffX]

Where are the mounted pics? Any pics of the mounting hardware? Did you get a controller for the winch?

[Brody]

Hey Jeff

Post number 4 shows the mounting arrangement. Since I used the universal 1/4" winch plate, I welded some angle to the bottom of the plate, drilling two holes in each angle to the side bolts. I drilled two 3/8" holes through the front part of the bumper, again through the winch plate, and then two more 1/2" holes through the front and plate. The 3/8" and 1/2" holes are the ones that I have welded bolts to the back of the plate for as you cannot reach them when the winch is in place. The 1/2" bolts capture the fairlead and the 3/8" bolts are additional mounting points. All in all, the winch is mounted with six 3/8" bolts and two 1/2" bolts and the rather weak ARB bumper is reinforced by the front of the winch plate being bolted through the front of the bumper, making this point on the bumper 3/8" thick overall.

The frame mounting points are actually above the winch plate mounts, one of the reasons this thing had to be redesigned to mount from the bottom up with the bumper in place. You would have a very hard time getting to the frame bolts due to the size of the winch.

No mounting pictures yet as Nick couldn't make it out yesterday to pick it up.

[JeffX]

I saw that picture, but didn't realize that was the finished mounting surfaces. The way mine mounts is so different, I sometimes get confused looking at stuff like this.

[Brody]

Yeah, I pretty much had to treat this the same way as if I were building a bumper from scratch using a universal winch mount plate for the starting point. Due to the size of the winch, the height, plus the height and mounting location of the solenoid pack, there wasn't a god way (or room) to mount it feet forward as the ARB mounts are designed...that is , and still have it be able to mount from the bottom up. At any rate, the way it is now mounted strengthens the ARB bumper big time.

I got confused making this work, so don't feel bad...:D:D:D