Northwoods Snowman

Now that I have a winch I wanted some way to bolt it down in the back of the Jeep when I'm not using it. Especially when off-road I don't want a 100# winch bouncing around loose in the back, and in the event of an accident I don't want it killing anyone. I had a few challenges in deciding how to mount it. My plan was to just make a "hitch" in the back that I could slide it into and pin it, but I'm planning to build a drawer system in the back too. After much head scratching I settled on mounting the winch longitudinally in the Jeep so I can bolt it directly to the body and put the drawer next to it. This was the best solution for keeping the most cargo space available but had two main issues. I couldn't just slide the winch into a hitch tube, and I didn't want to be bending over to fetch the winch out of the Jeep and throw my back out. It's not too bad when the Jeep in the garage, but when the front is sliding down an incline or something it makes it more of a pain (pun intended). My solution was to slide the winch out on a rail system.

Here's the base plate mounted down to the floor.



I put two bolts through the floor next to the wall and put a nutsert in the floor in the rear toward the inboard side. It goes through the floor directly above the brackets for the shocks. Two notes with this. 1) I had to cut spacers (can be seen in the picture below) to account for the approximately 1/2 inch of insulation under the carpet and 2) I had to put a heavy washer under the floor sheet metal to reinforce around the nutsert to keep it from pulling out. I tried to tighten it up without the spacers or the backing washer and it pulled out.



This is the carriage I built. I used 6" c-channel as the main plate and then welded on angle for the winch mount. This is designed so that the winch can be removed vertically instead of horizontally to allow the widest possible drawer in the future. The 5/8" pin goes through the hole in the winch cradle, and the 1/2" pin on top is what keep the winch from bouncing up.




When stowed the carriage locks in place with the gate bolt.



Then when needed it is pulled out to the end and then locked in place to prevent it from rolling back into the Jeep when reloading the winch or when sitting on an incline.



There are hard stops on both ends of the rails to keep the carriage from coming all the way out or too far back into the Jeep.




I can simply remove the bolt when I'm not carrying the winch and the carriage will come right out and I can leave it in the garage. The rails are the only thing that will stay in the Jeep all the time.

Here's my Warn cradle mounted up to it. I'll eventually move to this cradle since it has the handles but I don't have a fairlead with 10" spacing. The Hidden Hitch cradle the winch is currently on has the 11" spacing.






The way the Warn cradle is designed it rests flat on the carriage. My Hidden Hitch unit is different and required me to put this bolt in in order to keep the winch horizontal.



Here's the winch in place with the Hidden Hitch cradle. The only thing I need to do it cut about an inch off the cradle to clear the spare tire since it's longer than the Warn unit.

hankthetank

i think thats real cool. how tight are the rollers? is it gonna rattle and shake going down the road? is there a stopper at the end so the whole thing wont fly out if you're parked on an incline? nevertheless, thats using yer noodle, great job man!

jeepster90xj

you know, i have been thinking about the same exact thing because im going to be getting a winch soon that will be mounted to a hitch mount and this is the best idea i have ever seen. Major props for thinking of this. it is such a great idea.

Domaas

its different, i like it! if you could make it lockable that would be even cooler!

CobraMarty

That's cool. Make More!!

Lowrange2

Pretty neat.

Northwoods Snowman

The rollers are very close fitting. I actually had to mill the inside of the c-channels our a little. I wanted it close so that it wouldn't rattle. The only thing that rattles is the gate latch when the carriage moves back and forth from road bumps. Other than that it's very quiet. I may try and figure out a way to hold it more steady in the rails but today was the first day driving with it in the back so I'll give it a little more time and see if/how annoying it becomes. I mentioned stops in the writeup.

Would be easy to lock; I can put a locking trailer pin in it and weld a couple tabs for a pad lock. I'm not too worried about it though because it's out of sight and thus out of mind. I'd rather not have to worry about finding my key(s) to be able to unlock it to use it. I have a locking hitch pin if I need to use it to leave the winch installed at some point, but I don't plan on leaving it on either hitch. When I'm done with it, it will should go back into the back to stay clean.

tobyw

Pretty cool!! Maybe go with a hawse style fairlead and you could have an even wider drawer when all the dust settles?

Northwoods Snowman

Ideally I want to go with synthetic line and hawse fairlead. The cable on the winch has to be replaced as I found a nasty kink in it but the checkbook says the synthetic is a bad idea. Granted it says replacing it with cable is also a bad idea so we'll see what happens in the next few months. lol

TN12valve

Thats pretty darn cool, man!



Way to use your dipstick, Jimmy!