I convinced a friend of mine (Jeep owner) that the Warn 8274’s that I use on the Rovers are one of the best old winches out there…….so he found an old one on EBAY, rebuilt it, and decided that since I had talked him into the winch, I needed to help mount it.
3/8 plate steel was used………heavy stuff. The basic shapes were cut using the Hypertherm plasma cutter.
Face plate was clamped to the Bridgeport table where the cut out for the fairlead was made.
Even on a Bridgeport, cutting long runs of 3/8 steel takes quite a while.
Having a digital readout (DRO) comes in handy even doing what you would think is a simple rectangular cut out. Using the DRO produced a perfect rectangle cut in the face plate.
The bottom of the base plate. The back side was machined to provide clearance for the factory grill and power steering gear.
The roughed-out mount. Fits perfectly……now edges need to be rounded, weld spatter cleaned up, and I need to convince my friend that galvanizing is the way to go for coating.