Alright finally got some time to work on the truck again.
First off, the winch! I was lucky and got to experience some of this forums generosity for this entire project. The winch and mount came from [MENTION=6163]phillyd2[/MENTION] who gave me a great deal and let me stop by his house to pick everything up! We had a long time standing deal for the equipment so he was kind enough to let me come get it a few months ago when he upgraded his winch. I then got the synthetic winch line from [MENTION=79439]bernardmwrangle[/MENTION] who again gave a fellow forum member a great deal on a brand new spydura line. Thanks guys!
First things first, makes sure it works before cramming into my bumper.
And it works perfectly!
The install is actually pretty simple. But of course I wanted to make it a little complicated. Everyone knows I'm addicted to switches, so why pass up the perfect opportunity to add some more? I wanted to add a winch power and in/out control inside the cab for the winch. So when I get stuck in the snow I can stay inside in the heat while I pull myself to freedom.
BUT, it's a little trickier than just hooking up a switch to the winch. The warn solenoid used to use a 3 wire control, which is a peace of cake to wire a switch into. So they of course had to change it. The new Warn solenoids are now a 5 wire system to protect the winch in case of a solenoid failure. This works by routing the ground for the system though the switch, so if the warn wired remote isn't connected, the solenoids aren't grounded. But as soon as the wired remote is plugged in, the system is grounded and and circuit is completed. So now I could have come up with a system to mimic this and allow me to use switches (you could use a relay to switch to ground for example). But I was planning on isolating the winch anyway, so I just bypassed the 5 wire safety.
Figuring out just how the circuit works...
Found the wires I needed (in/out and powered) AND you can see the short red wire in the solenoid cover that is bridging black and brown wire. That is just bypassing the ground routed though the switch. So now the winch can be controlled regardless of whether the remote is connected.
Now I dropped the bumper off:
Loosened the aluminum bumper:
And crammed the plate in there!
Everyone is completely right, it's very obvious how this fits once it's all in front of you. So not much explanation is needed.
The only problem is this pipe (that I think is either air conditioning or power steering...not sure which as I didn't really trace it back to far) which is right smack in the middle of where the winch would mount.
Here's the winch sitting half way on the plate so you can see how the pipe gets in the way.
You can fix this pretty easy by just bending it back behind the metal bar in front of the radiator. It's connected to two flexible hoses on either end so it doesn't hurt it to bend it a bit.
Then the winch will fit right it! Here's the winch with the line on and wired up (the batteries out when the picture was taken because I used the side posts on the optima to wire the winch into.
I have since painted the fairing black, and then attached a prolink thimble onto the front. I don't have a picture of this yet, but I'll get one later and throw it up. I think it looks great!
