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I ordered this winch bumper last week:

GX550 LOW CUT FRONT WINCH BUMPER.

JWOffroad winch bumper.jpg

I'm planning on ordering this 12k winch. The price is great, it's waterproof, the solenoid is easy to relocate, it comes with a nice Hawse fairlead and hook, and it has some good online reviews. You can also "clock" the free spool switch which means you can rotate that side of the winch housing so the free spool switch is facing forward. The JW Offroad bumper has openings on the front between the aux lights and fairlead that look like it will be easy to reach the free spool switch if it's facing forward.

SCAR 12S - 12,000 lbs. Rated Synthetic Rope Winch

And of course I'll have to get some RIGID cube lights to drop in there too.
 
The owner and fabricator at JW Offroad emailed me. My bumper should be shipping out next week or shortly thereafter. He changed his design a bit in response to comments received by some of us interested parties. The bumper now has bolt-on wings to make shipping a lot less of a hassle and a lot cheaper, probably by at least a couple hundred bucks, if not more. Shipping to my door should now be $100 or less.

He has some nice CAD drawings up on his site with the new design:

GX550 LOW CUT FRONT WINCH BUMPER.

My last bumper was the bolt-on-wing design and it was plenty strong even though it wasn't nearly as beefy or reinforced as JW's design. I'm looking forward to getting this installed.

I ordered the OVS SCAR 12k winch and it should be here next week too. Thinking of trying some PIAA 3" cube lights to mount in the bumper. I've used Hellas, Baja Designs, and Rigids and they are all good. I actually have a pair of old incandescent Hella Rallye 4000 lights from my 2004 Land Rover that I'd love to mount for that old school vibe, but there's not a horizontal shelf surface on which to mount the Hellas.
 
Seems like a logical solution to keeping shipping costs down and the connections seem pretty beefy. When you spoke to the JW folks, did you ask about a possible solution to cover up/protect the areas in front of the front tires, like Victory's bumper seems to do? This is the one thing that is giving me some pause on this bumper. For looks and for function. Wil be curious to see what you think about this aspect once yours is installed.
 
At this point I don't know what happens with the cut inner fender liner in the front fender area. I've dealt with this issue on other trucks and usually you can cut the liner to be out of the way and out of view but it still catches much and water flinging forward. I'll have to see how it all works out. If there's a big gap I'll just get a sheet of thin rubber or plastic and work out fastening a section between the inner fender liner and the bumper. A few little rivets should suffice.
 

GX550 Poll

  • 2 weeks

    Votes: 3 10.0%
  • 1 - 2 months

    Votes: 6 20.0%
  • 3 - 5 months

    Votes: 2 6.7%
  • More than 5 months

    Votes: 19 63.3%
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