Over the weekend I installed the Trail Tailor winch plate in my 2013 LC. I told @reevesci that I would write up some notes from the install.
As it turns out the 2016 bumper is different than the 2013 – the 2013 has less space.
Left side of the photo is a 16+ (slightly modified to try and get it to fit) and on the right the plate for a 2013.
The front bumper is easy to take off, nothing special, just pay attention to what goes where so it goes back together. I had the bumper off three times during this process, it comes off in about 10 minutes now!
The styrofoam and aluminum energy absorbers come off along with the mounts.
Winch plate test fit – verified that the mounts were flush to the frame.
Since I wasn’t sure if this plate would fit, I put the bumper back on to check….it fit really well, nice and tight. It was @reevesci idea to have the plate follow the angle of the bumper, it really turned out nicely. I also marked the fairlead mounting holes on the inside the bumper with a sharpie so that I could cut the bumper once it was off the LC.
The bumper support bracket needs to be modified so that the winch will fit on the tray. There is a piece I cut out – the bracket seems strong enough that it won’t cause an issue in the future.
The winch I chose was a ComeUp 9.5k. The winch fits but there didn’t seem to be many options for the control box. There wasn’t enough wire to mount the control box behind the passengers side headlight and there isn’t a lot of real-estate behind the bumper. The winch includes a wireless controller but I still wanted to have access to the box to plug in the hand held control. With just a slight bit of modification to the cross support I was able to fit the box under the support. The control box fits and doesn’t touch. To get the support out, the headlights have to be taken out temporarily to remove a bolt below – I think there are only three bolts holding the support. It’s easy to remove – I didn’t disconnect the headlights, just temporally removed the bolts holding them and then put them back in place.
As it turns out the 2016 bumper is different than the 2013 – the 2013 has less space.
Left side of the photo is a 16+ (slightly modified to try and get it to fit) and on the right the plate for a 2013.
The front bumper is easy to take off, nothing special, just pay attention to what goes where so it goes back together. I had the bumper off three times during this process, it comes off in about 10 minutes now!
The styrofoam and aluminum energy absorbers come off along with the mounts.
Winch plate test fit – verified that the mounts were flush to the frame.
Since I wasn’t sure if this plate would fit, I put the bumper back on to check….it fit really well, nice and tight. It was @reevesci idea to have the plate follow the angle of the bumper, it really turned out nicely. I also marked the fairlead mounting holes on the inside the bumper with a sharpie so that I could cut the bumper once it was off the LC.
The bumper support bracket needs to be modified so that the winch will fit on the tray. There is a piece I cut out – the bracket seems strong enough that it won’t cause an issue in the future.
The winch I chose was a ComeUp 9.5k. The winch fits but there didn’t seem to be many options for the control box. There wasn’t enough wire to mount the control box behind the passengers side headlight and there isn’t a lot of real-estate behind the bumper. The winch includes a wireless controller but I still wanted to have access to the box to plug in the hand held control. With just a slight bit of modification to the cross support I was able to fit the box under the support. The control box fits and doesn’t touch. To get the support out, the headlights have to be taken out temporarily to remove a bolt below – I think there are only three bolts holding the support. It’s easy to remove – I didn’t disconnect the headlights, just temporally removed the bolts holding them and then put them back in place.
