I have a 90 pickup, and my question is, behind the front bumper there is a piece of steel that is welded between the frame at the very front of the forks, does anybody know how strong this is? My thought was to either get a winch channel mount, cut the bumper, and weld it straight to this piece, or cut out a slot big enough for a 2" hitch (the type that bolts to the bottom of a bumper for a hitch mount) and leave the wings of it on top and weld some supports in to strengthen everyting and then use a hitch mounted winch mount which would make it removable when not in use and would leave the bumper looking almost stock. Any opinions would be welcome.

 

im in the process of putting in a winch bumper and also have seen that plate, it is not strong enough, doing a mount that connects to the frame on the bottom side would be a good idea, the idea of a 2" receiver set up would be your best bet.

 

that front x-member with the holes in it is thin metal and will peel apart if you put weight on it. beef it up with plate or heavy angle iron weld it in there and it will make it useful for a winch mount.

 

there is a reason why AOR makes these:

http://www.addictedoffroad.com/index...products_id=73




or just use one of these in combo to your bumper: http://www.trail-gear.com/bumpers

 

Thanks for the replys, definantly giving me some ideas to think about.

 

I have now the set up that extreme posted. I ran the winch mount without the reenforcement plate for almost a year with some hard pulls. When I removed the winch plate to SAS the rig many of the stock bolt were pulling through thin stock crossmember. The reenforcement plate is the only way to go.

 

Here's a recent thread you might be interested in: https://www.yotatech.com/forums/f116...h-pics-233934/

 

I think I have a new cheap plan in mind. Im on a very limited budget, so my new thinking is to get the reciever hitch off a junkyard 3/4 or 1 ton truck, chop off the vertical supports on either end, and remove the factory support and just weld in the receiver in its place, that way not only am I beefing up the frame a little but I can just notch the front bumper and do a hidden hitch type thing with a removable license plate to cover up where the notch is and nobody would even know i had changed anything unti i went to use it. a receiver hitch from pullapart is only about 30 bucks so the most I would have in it is time.

 

Sounds good. Post up some pics when you do it.