Soldier4him

XRC 8 Winch Install

About a year and a half ago, just before moving to Chicago I installed a Smittybilt XRC 8 Winch on the front of my Jeep.  It is an 8000 pound winch that I purchased at 4 Wheel Parts in Atlanta.  I've used it many, many times in a variety of conditions from pulling myself out of mud to pulling other vehicles out of the ditch in snow storms here in Chicago.  To date, I've not had any problems with this product.  In addition to having to purchase the actual winch, you must also purchase a winch mounting plate.

Here is a shot of the front of the Jeep before doing any work on it.  I'm assuming that anyone with a TJ is going to have a similar front end.

The directions that come with the winch are pretty straight forward and are not too difficult to follow.  The first thing that must be done is to remove the plastic cover with the "Jeep" logo on it.  There are 4 bolts that hold it in place along the frame rails, as seen here.

The next step is to remove the factory front tow hooks.  While  I could see reason why these would be nice to keep, the reality is that I've never once missed them with the winch hook in their place.

After removing these hooks, then you mount the winch plate onto the top of the bumper.  The winch plate is bolted to the frame rails with the same bolts that were used to hold the tow hooks in place.  You must also pull the front bolt out of the sway bar bearing and use that bolt to hold the plate down as well.  Here is what the plate looks like installed.

After this you are then able to bolt the winch to the plate with the bolts that are provided with the kit.  Here is a shot of the winch after it was installed.  (Note: When I shot this picture I hadn't yet installed the bolts.)

The final step was to run the required wires to power the winch.  Not pictured above is the solenoid box that mounts to the top of the winch.  This box has a input for the winch controls as well as for the power and ground wires.  In my opinion the idea of having to stand outside to use the winch was a stupid idea, especially in Chicago where we get blizzards.  I cut the plug off of the end of the winch control line and wired it directly into the solenoid box.  I routed the control wire through the grill, along the grill supports, through a rubber plug that was already in the firewall and finally into the center console of the Jeep.  Here are a couple of shots.  (note: I had to snap these pictures just now of the wiring, which is nearly 2 years later.  This is the reason the controller looks like it's seen some action, well because it has. )

Control wire running back to the firewall.

One of the issues I wanted to avoid with wiring the winch controller directly to the winch, and placing the control handle in my console was the possibility of the button being depressed accidentally by kids, or stuff bumping the button.  To prevent this I wired the control line through a switch I installed in my dash.  Here is a shot of the switch in the dash; you can see the red and yellow wires coming from the firewall under the plastic trip near the shift lever where I routed them back to the console.  (note: this switch can be purchased very cheap at any auto parts store.)

The very last thing to was to wire the positive and negative wires directly to the battery.  These I also ran through the grill, along the grill support.  I loosened my battery post clamp and wired them directly into the clamp.

That's about all there is to it.  If anyone has any questions feel free to contact me.