or will a winch plate from trail gear for a first gen 4runner work witha second gen??? whats the best way to mount a winch on the front other than buying a 1000 dollar bumper... shipping to canada and duty kills me...so a winch plate would be best and i could bulid off that..would it be better to just fab my own?

 

I have a front receiver mount (takes a wench cradle) you could buy or I could send you a paper template that shows size and where all the holes go. It would be a good starting place even if you didn't make a receiver out of it. If you can fab it would be cheaper to send you paper than metal.

 

I used his plans that he sent me and it worked out pretty good built the rest of the bumper around it as you can.

 

i toyed around with this idea... TG winch plate and a frame brace from Front Range Offroad. I posted in their forum about it, and Brian said that if I welded nuts to his frame brace I could weld that to the front crossmember, just like a first gen and the holes for it would match up with the TG plate. Then a bumper could be fabbed off of the Trail gear plate.

And if you want more bolts holding it on, you still have the second gen. bolt holes on the sides of the frame and you could fab mounts to that too.

Hope this makes sense, its only 7am here....

 

james dean i want those plans... can you pm on where to download or if you want coin to send a hardcopy or what ever... your design is really nice

 

Dave'z Offroad built my front bump off of a trail gear plate. There are a couple of spacers added to avoid conflict with the bottom radiator support, but the entire unit attaches with 9 bolts and is super solid. I've winched with it and there's no flex to speak of.



Andy

 

AndYota's bumper is a really clean design. I think that's the first tube bumper I've really liked.

 

Very nice and functional.

 

Thanks!! I really like it too. It's got great clearance, and it fits great.

http://www.davezoffroadperformance.com

Andy

 

The problem I ran into with the FROR brace and bumper is that the two outside holes, on the front cross member, are smaller on a 1st gen than 2nd gen. So, a bolt that fits through the hole on the brace is too small and a bolt that threads into the hole is too big, but judging from Andyota's pic it doesn't seem to be that way with the TG winch plate...

 

The TG plate has 6 holes that match up with 1st gen trucks/runners, but on the 2nd gen only the bottom 4 match up. Mine was built with a tab welded onto the center in the back that attaches to a factory hole in the front crossmember. I'll take a couple of closer up pics this afternoon and post them up.

Andy

 

I will try to work on getting my plastic template into a computer drawing so it can be printed out.

 

thanks james dean... i would really like to mount my winch the same way you have... i have already taken off my bumper and might do a snorkle at the same time \m/

 

I would also be very interested in that information James Dean.

 

well my original clutch finally went in my trail rig 233km later.. so when im going that and my welded rear end i want to put on my front winch.... gonna be doing this over the coming months.. hopefully james gets his plastic cut outs ready for sale!