Would love a picture when you have time.My ACE bumper was too close to the grill to have the wires go out the back. It also sat lower so I would have probably had to cut through the actual plastic vs the grill part. Cutting the grill sounds like a good option, but then you will have to unhook everything if you ever want to take the grill off for repair work.
I ended up cutting a hole in the top and wiring them out the side of the cover. Then wrapped all the wires with black electrical tape. This way the winch tucks right up next to the grill and all the wires are together wrapped up in the tape so it does not look as messy.
Not really proud of the work. I figured that I was going to put the nice Warn winch cover on it. I bought the cover and the cover looks great but will not fit the winch because the grill is pressed up against the back of it.Would love a picture when you have time.
They took the easy route. I would not be happy with that either. Depending on where you live, those wires are really susceptible to getting caught on branches or pinched by rocks. Hard to tell from the picks but mine goes behind the grill and straight up to the right of the body mount.Here are a few pics of my Warn VR12 install and wiring with a RR Full Width HD bumper. The holes in the winch plate push the VR12 very close to the grill so I took the control box apart, loosened the cable attach points and "adjusted" the cables so they exited the back of the control box in a vertically stacked manner to reduce the space (essentially to the width of 1 cable) required to get them between the back of the winch and the grill.
3rd & 4th pic shows the routing of the + and - cables under the radiator, then in btwn the fender liner and the frame and up through a gap in front of the battery (5th pic)
Hope this helps
How do you like that winch on that bumper? I just installed bumper this weekend and am looking for a winch for fill in the gapping hole sitting there.Where my winch sits, it’s cables exit the winch just at the bottom of the grille. I placed them behind the grille facia, and pulled them up through the gap between the headlight and fender, under the air box, and then into the main shutoff relay. Cables are all hidden except for the relay and battery area. Nothing exposed to get damaged.
And no..........that is not a negative cable attached to the positive terminal. It’s another feed line to a 250 amp relay that feeds my accessory relay control center. The two pack of 1/0 gauge jumpers only came in red/ black.
It fits like a glove. Big PITA to mount the winch after the bumper is on though. The winch plate has an access hole under it to get to the mounting holes, but you need two elbows to easily reach them. It took a good hour to do just those 4 bolts with the loose nuts in the winch base. It would have been easier to use some kind of tape or tar to keep the nuts in place to help align them with the bolt coming up from the bottom since you can’t have hands on both at the same time. Definitely use Loc-tite on them so you don’t have to get in there again.How do you like that winch on that bumper? I just installed bumper this weekend and am looking for a winch for fill in the gapping hole sitting there.