My rear bumper

[RatherBeJeeping]

With the utter disgust I have toward my rear bumpers
reciever hitch I built 5 years ago I've started to
hack up the rear bumper for a make over.

Here's the twist, I want a rear winch too. So I'm
picking up a winch plate to act as the base of the
bumper and cutting out the center part except for the
rear or the tube. So it'll be like taking out a C
channel from the box. I'll plate the sides that are
opened and gusset that whole set up.

I'll end up cutting in to the swing out arm too so I
don't have to have this whole thing killing any
departure angle, and I'll box that cut out too. I've
already added a cross brace to the upright for the
tire for support.

So the question is, do I pull the bumper off the Jeep
and add some material across the back wall (it's 1/4")
to help with load distribution while pulling? Add
some 1/4" or 5/16" plate?

[rick]

By back wall, I think you mean the rear crossmember? If so, that should definitely be beefed up if you haven't done it already (sounds like you may have replaced it with 1/4" since I don't think that's what a YJ starts with...) I think 1/4" should be ok, but more importantly the attachment of the crossmember to the frame is probably most critical if you're going to winch off of it. If the crossmember is secured to the frame top and bottom by the factory welds, you might consider adding some trianglular gussets from the sides of the frame to the crossmember to make sure nothing lets go. How are you attaching the winch plate to the bumper? You should probably carefully consider what the load due to the winch will do to the crossmember. If it is mounted toward the top of the bumper, it will tend to pull the top of the bumper more than the bottom, effectively putting even more "twist" on the crossmember than the bumper alone does. Unfortunately since you have a YJ your shackles are in the way of simply slotting the crossmember at the outside of the frame and installing some brackets alongside the frame to pull directly on the frame instead of the crossmember. This is the way I had my original hitch mounted and it was indestructible. However, it didn't do much for protecting the bottom of the corners since it was only as wide as the frame.

[RatherBeJeeping]

Okay, to clarify on my rear cross member set up.

My shackles are below the frame like a CJ, and I've got 1/4" angle inside and outside of the frame welded on and that's what my rear bumper bolts to. It's not going anywhere.

As for the winch plate to the bumper, I plan to remove 3 sides of the bumper (rear most, top, and sides) and weld the winch plate in as the bottom piece. I'll box the sides of the expose bumper (2x4 1/4") with some 1/4" plate and I'll even end up cutting and plating the swing out to keep the winch from eating up all my clearance.
Under the winch plate will be a step bumper reciever hitch welded to the winch plate.

[RatherBeJeeping]

Found a picture of the frame mount

http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/rather...ba.jpg&.src=ph

[rick]

The picture requires login I think, it doesn't work. What did you end up doing with this?

So your crossmember is the original one, just with 1/4" gussets both side of the frame? My crossmember is now effed after bouncing the 300 lb bumper/tire/cans around on it. I have 1/4" plate gussets on the outside of the frame, i was thinking of just adding another set of 1/4" gussets to the inside. Obviously one side was not enough. Is this what you did? I actually set out to replace the entire crossmember with 1/4", but it's kind of an odd size...

[RatherBeJeeping]

Yeah Rick, that's what I did. Dropped the tank and put 1/4" inside the frame rails too. All the mounting bolts (4 per side) are tied directly in to the 1/4" that's welded to the frame. With a 35" spare, and 2 full gas gans back there it's never so much as hinted at it not being strong enough.

Now, as for what I did... I'm mid-project right now. I've modified my swing out to make room to recess the winch plate in to the bumper and not have any part of the winch plate lower then the bottom of the bumper. I'll weld on a reciever hitch under that, and I'm only giving up about 2" of clearance over what I had before.

work schedule is keeping me from making it to the store to buy the steel I need right now, but that should change in a week or 2.