murfanater

What i need soon is a winch because i dont want to get stuck. But what i want to do is jjust put the winch plate on the stock bumper. The reason i thing i can do this is because the bumper is steel and very strong. Can i go what i am think? Thanks

CheapCherokee

No, the stock bumper and mounting is less than adequate for a winch. And the bumper attaches to the brackets only by two bolts per side. You'll need a new bumper with better mounting or the detours backbone to use with the stock bumper

Tom95YJ

Detours Offroad Backbone is what you want




http://detoursusa.com/xjbackbone.php


*Edit*

Your stock bumper is flimsy metal, if it was strong people would not be building/buying rock bumpers, My stock bumper was bent when a car backed into it in a parking lot, a few weeks later I was hit by a car going about 10mph an it bent the bumper, brackets, an sheared the bumper off the brackets the only thing holding it on was the endcaps

macgyver35

It looks from your pictures as though you have the stock front bumper. If this is the case, I, and about a bazillion other forum members, can assure you that the stock bumper is NOT strong enough to mount a winch on. Yes, you could technically bolt the winch to the bumper and it will hold the 80-100 pounds that the winch weighs. But, once you try to use the winch, and now have an additional 500-8000 pounds of force pulling on it, the bumper WILL FAIL. Not only that, but you'll also likely twist and bend the front of the unibody into a pretzel, causing damage to steering an suspension components, header panel (which supports your radiator among other things), inner fenders, front grill, etc. You also run the risk of seriously injuring or killing yourself or a bystander when parts start breaking loose from the front of your Jeep.

You need to understand that a proper winch bumper does several things:

1) Properly supports the weight of the winch and provides a strong enough mounting point for the fairlead, which has tremendous stress put upon it.

2) It is built with thick enough metal to hold up to the forces pulling against it. Most winch bumper are made from 3/16"-5/16" thick steel plate. This is many orders of magnitude stronger than the roughly 14 gauge sheet metal your factory bumper is made from.

3) It provides a tie-in further back into the unibody than the stock bumper. This ties the two together in a way that they both become stronger for it. A proper winch bumper acts as a bracing system for the front unibody to reinforce it so that the stresses generated by the winch don't warp the unibody. Of course, nothing is guaranteed, and those using winches in the 8000-12000 range will tell you that damage is still very much a possibility, even with a good winch bumper, if you don't use the winch correctly or in a less than optimum manner. Especially if you are in a double-line pulling scenario, which multiplies the force the winch places on the bumper.

In short...

NO! Don't even think about doing it!

jeepsurfer1

It can be done, but with as much.bracing and everything needed might as well get the back bone, have fun on the trail.

murfanater

I like the detours mount goinng too look into thaaat thanks all!

Mike1114

Detours for older XJ's. (I love the stealth look of this bumper, people ask me all the time if it is ok to winch from it cause they think its just mounted to the original bumper)