Mgg253
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Hopefully people find this helpful.
Vehicle: 2021 4xe Rubicon
Winch: Badlands Apex 12k synthetic rope
Mounting: factory steel bumper with Rockhard 4x4 mounting plate
starting out:
Measurement before upgrades on passenger front:
first was to get everything off. Removal wasn’t bad, but the bolts mounting the bumper to the frame horns were not all straight which made it a little wiggle to remove
Then the problems started The plate did not fit the bolts at all. I beat and beat on it with a rubber hammer and loosened every torx bolt on the steel bumper to get every millimeter of play. While this sounds like a small deal, and it kind of was, it took an hour just to get the plate on. I thought that would have been a 20 second task like in Rockhard’s video and just slide on.
I didn’t get pictures but this was immediately followed by the next problem, the bolts for the hawse fairlead do not fit. Save yourself the time of trying everything possible and just go buy new bolts. Kit comes with 1.75 in bolts, 2 in bolts is the min, 2.25 (store didn’t have) I would have done but 2.5 was a bit long IMO. Again what I thought was a simple 2 min part of install took almost 2 hours which included a run to Lowes, 1 mile from my house. I could have saved 1 of those hours by simply not trying everything I could think of to make the bolts work and looking around my misc bolt bin to no avail.
once mounted Rockhards video is for a warn winch which must be a touch wide, no matter, no need to have someone hold the wich in place while you bring the bumper up, I just mounted all then had a neighbor help me get it Up.
In the above pic you can see I forgot to pull the line through the bumper, don’t be like me because I had to un mount and remount to pull it through, space is tight!!
next, remember how I said it was a little wiggle to get the bumper off? And the mounting plate seemed out of spec? Well the little bit of movement in the bolts made it hell to get back on. With help we must have mounted/remounted it 5 or 6 times just to get all the bolts barely in. The only way to get the bumper fully on was to start the nuts and wrench it down. Again added a solid 30 min to my day. A 16mm ratchet wrench would have also saved additional time here. All I had was and adjustable wrench, no ratchet/socket would fit to reach at least one of the bolts each side.
once I got it all on, I thought it would be easy to just put it all together, but it still took a lot more. The plate doesn’t allow any room behind the winch for where the wiring exits the control box, so we improvised.
Also as you might notice the winch basically touches the grill, I had to add 2 extra washers on the back mounting bolts to increase the angle enough to have about 2 pieces of paper width from touching.
The lower mounting bracket also seen in the previous pic didn’t fit perfect and seemed out of spec, another I barely got one bolt borderline cross threaded at an angle in while using a floor jack with a board on the back of the plate. Only then was I able to get the other bolt in, back out the first and seat them both properly. And no my top bolt was not tightened down completely while doing that to allow movement.
next up was wiring, it actually wasn’t hard. I removed the passenger fender liner and air box to have room to work
I didn’t picture my wiring because I will be buying a switch to hook up to an aux switch in the cab in the future.
Finally done, time to measure…. I’m gonna need a .75 inch spacer on the front
First winch install ever took me 8 hours. If I didn’t have the fitment issues it would have been 4-5 hours. Now that I know what I’m doing I’d shave another hour off that and bet I could do it in 3-4 hours
the product is great and very high quality. That said, even with tight tolerances it did not fit right without significant tweaking so for that I have to rate it 3.5 stars outta 5. If it all fit easy I’d give it 4.5 for the badlands winch due to where the winch sits on the mounting plate (quarter to half inch too far back) and the short fairlead bolts.
Vehicle: 2021 4xe Rubicon
Winch: Badlands Apex 12k synthetic rope
Mounting: factory steel bumper with Rockhard 4x4 mounting plate
starting out:
Measurement before upgrades on passenger front:
first was to get everything off. Removal wasn’t bad, but the bolts mounting the bumper to the frame horns were not all straight which made it a little wiggle to remove
Then the problems started The plate did not fit the bolts at all. I beat and beat on it with a rubber hammer and loosened every torx bolt on the steel bumper to get every millimeter of play. While this sounds like a small deal, and it kind of was, it took an hour just to get the plate on. I thought that would have been a 20 second task like in Rockhard’s video and just slide on.
I didn’t get pictures but this was immediately followed by the next problem, the bolts for the hawse fairlead do not fit. Save yourself the time of trying everything possible and just go buy new bolts. Kit comes with 1.75 in bolts, 2 in bolts is the min, 2.25 (store didn’t have) I would have done but 2.5 was a bit long IMO. Again what I thought was a simple 2 min part of install took almost 2 hours which included a run to Lowes, 1 mile from my house. I could have saved 1 of those hours by simply not trying everything I could think of to make the bolts work and looking around my misc bolt bin to no avail.
once mounted Rockhards video is for a warn winch which must be a touch wide, no matter, no need to have someone hold the wich in place while you bring the bumper up, I just mounted all then had a neighbor help me get it Up.
In the above pic you can see I forgot to pull the line through the bumper, don’t be like me because I had to un mount and remount to pull it through, space is tight!!
next, remember how I said it was a little wiggle to get the bumper off? And the mounting plate seemed out of spec? Well the little bit of movement in the bolts made it hell to get back on. With help we must have mounted/remounted it 5 or 6 times just to get all the bolts barely in. The only way to get the bumper fully on was to start the nuts and wrench it down. Again added a solid 30 min to my day. A 16mm ratchet wrench would have also saved additional time here. All I had was and adjustable wrench, no ratchet/socket would fit to reach at least one of the bolts each side.
once I got it all on, I thought it would be easy to just put it all together, but it still took a lot more. The plate doesn’t allow any room behind the winch for where the wiring exits the control box, so we improvised.
Also as you might notice the winch basically touches the grill, I had to add 2 extra washers on the back mounting bolts to increase the angle enough to have about 2 pieces of paper width from touching.
The lower mounting bracket also seen in the previous pic didn’t fit perfect and seemed out of spec, another I barely got one bolt borderline cross threaded at an angle in while using a floor jack with a board on the back of the plate. Only then was I able to get the other bolt in, back out the first and seat them both properly. And no my top bolt was not tightened down completely while doing that to allow movement.
next up was wiring, it actually wasn’t hard. I removed the passenger fender liner and air box to have room to work
I didn’t picture my wiring because I will be buying a switch to hook up to an aux switch in the cab in the future.
Finally done, time to measure…. I’m gonna need a .75 inch spacer on the front
First winch install ever took me 8 hours. If I didn’t have the fitment issues it would have been 4-5 hours. Now that I know what I’m doing I’d shave another hour off that and bet I could do it in 3-4 hours
the product is great and very high quality. That said, even with tight tolerances it did not fit right without significant tweaking so for that I have to rate it 3.5 stars outta 5. If it all fit easy I’d give it 4.5 for the badlands winch due to where the winch sits on the mounting plate (quarter to half inch too far back) and the short fairlead bolts.
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