Monday, December 01, 2008
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Fitting a Chinese Winch to a standard bar

By Wayne Smith

Hmmmm, spot the mistake in this pic…………………………………yep, should be in the bar not in the box!
 
Called the bro to come and give me a lift while I took the 8 bolts out of the bar.
First up we disconnected the Flashers, Spotlights and the UHF radio aerial.
Put the bar face down on an old foam mattress to protect the spotties and paintwork
now the fun bit!!
 
The winch wouldn't fit in the bar without swinging the gearbox 90 degrees so that the dog clutch/gear lever would be accessible from the front of the car. thanks to the advice from the guys on the forums I cautiously pulled it apart. Starting by undoing the 2 chrome bars.

Once the bars were removed and nothing flew apart I could take the gear box off the winch.
It was a bit stiff to pry apart, so a bit of a belt with the soft hammer and bingo one gearbox laying on it's back.

Next was to undo the allan keys that hold the cover on. That done the cover was removed and still nothing flew out, whew thank god for that!!

Gently removing the plate after the allen keys are undone, this is where I was sorta expecting all these springs and ball bearings to flying out. Thankfully it was an anticlimax and everything stayed where it was.

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After carefully deciding which way I wanted to rotate the box, it was placed into position and the allen keys put back in and carefully tightened. A tip here is to turn the gear lever so that the gears and the base plate engage, seemed to make it easier to line up.

The gearbox was then replaced on the winch and the 2 chrome bars were retightened and the winch mod was finished.

The winch was placed into the bar to see how it would fit

The winch was put into place and then we found that the bolts supplied are too short. Luckily I had some in the shed a bit longer, so we carried on.  
We lifted the bar onto two milk crates so that the mounting bolts could be done up. Fitted the Fairlead and we were ready to put the whole thing back.
This was carefully done as it would be easy to scratch your paintwork getting the bar into place. I'd suggest that if you can, get 2 mates to carry the bar over. That way you can watch and keep an eye on the pride and joy.

Once in position it's a simple matter to line the bar up and tighten the mounting bolts.
 
All finished and the new numberplates are on as well.

All in all, I'd say an hour all up now that I've done one but if you allow say 2 hours you should have no worries.

(ZBEAST) Hayden, the forums resident autoleccy, came over to hook it up.
Because I didn't want to have the control box on the bar, (I wanted the box out of the way of prying fingers) the supplied leads weren't much use. After mounting the solenoid box onto the Intercooler mounts Hayden went to work and made up all new leads from cable that looked much better than the original. It is thicker wire core and also has better insulation. It is also wired to the dual batteries, these are connected by a Redarc solenoid (another one of Haydens jobs) So to use the winch it's just lift the bonnet, Plug in the controller and hit the Dual Battery button in the cab. Then winch away to your hearts content.
And finally the test!