Jimny from Cape Town, South Africa

yeh im interested in those front recovery points aswell

hi
good pictures

nice jimny you got there but i think your camber is a bit out in the first pic :lol:

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone. much appreciated.

Here are some step-by-step photos of the winch installation plus the recovery points and shackles.

Standard front


Bumper removed. The winch will sit between the two beams of the ladder chassis


To save time and money, I did all the pre-weld preparations myself, such as cleaning off the paint


I bought two-ton shackles and had some lugs fabricated. The standard towing ring on the Jimny doesn't look tough enough for a recovery point


I designed the plate on which the winch will sit and had it cut at a friend who owns a waterjet company. 6mm high tensile plate steel


There we go, the plate and the recovery points are welded on. The plate does not extend past the chassis but the lugs do. Hopefully this won't affect my approach angle too much.



This is the winch that I went for.
The Jimny has a gross weight of 1,4tons and a dry weight a bit below 1ton. According to my calculations a winch with a pulling power of 2tons would therefore be the minimum requirement (the absolute minimum).
This T-max pulls 2.2tons which will hopefully be enough.


But the advantage of the winch is that it is REALLY compact and quite light. At 20kg it doesn't push down the front suspension by more than 5mm.


Then came the tricky part. Refitting the bumper and cutting holes in all the right places.


I didn't want to butcher my car so I had to keep the cutting as minor as possible.


My considerations were that the winch should never make direct contact with the plastics (apparently can get pretty hot) and that there should be some space to get my hand in so that I can engage the clutch)


The roller protrudes about 1.5cm beyond the bumper, which allows me to run the cable at extreme angles without cutting up the plastic bumper. But I don't want it sticking out so far that it digs into the ground when I go through a ditch.

The winch itself does not block airflow. The radiator and fan is well above the cable drum.
The winch's controller unit is inside the engine bay.

Have you managed to use it yet except for the one occassion on your holiday?

Vic

I like that a lot, nice and discrete.