Nothing like a little Land Rover surprise, winch install...

[paulg_d130]

what was supposed to be a fairly straight forward winch install on my 130 has resulted in some frame surgery to try and stem the spread of the frame cancer and provide something that wont detach the first time I get to use my new winch!
Documented for posterity's sake.
Warning this will be a bit picture heavy, but hey I only come here for the pictures so going full send on it.
synopsis:
substantial rust in passenger front frame, both sides and bottom section, extending into passenger side of front cross member.
spent many hours cutting and grinding until I could get clean margins to graft new tissue to.
fit up and weld in patches of 1/8" sheet, add 1/8" plate to outside of frame rail both in front and behind track bar reinforcing strap.
make up matching 1/4" plate frame stiffeners, these extend all the way back to the engine mounts and use the 4 bolts on each side for the steering box to bolt to, also have numerous plug welds to tie into existing frame, then welded top and bottom.
Plates were left long to provide mounting for winch cradle and tow rings.
Plan is to make detachable winglets for the outside section of the bumper so they are easy to remove/replace if damaged, or can be removed to fit those 40" tires someday.
Once plates were installed, new crossmember was fabricated out of 3/16" wall tube and fully welded to the 1/4" plates, includes nutserts for mounting PS lines
finally fabricated up a winch cradle that bolts into the new frame and acts as an additional cross member.
Welding to the frame proved quite finicky to get decent clean welds, with good penetration but not warp or distort everything (to much at least)
anyway enough words and onto the pictures...

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[paulg_d130]

more pics

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[paulg_d130]

they keep coming...

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[paulg_d130]

and finally onto the part that started this whole fiasco...

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[paulg_d130]

In case anyone is wondering why the side plates of the winch cradle look like swiss cheese, it was not a mistake.
I designed it so that right now with the truck on stockish springs and tires the mount could site 2 1/2" higher up so as to not act like a plow.
but in the future if I decide to lift the truck and go with larger tires I can just lower it down (keeps the coppers at bay for their 29" maximum bumper height laws) and all the holes are there its just a simple unbolt and lower it and rebolt it.

[paulg_d130]

painted and installed! still need to build the outer wing sections and brush guard tubes, but got some retaining walls to build first.

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[ANDYD]

Nice work Paul, thanks for sharing the photos. It must be a relief to get it all back together! Its funny how many "little" jobs turn into BIG jobs on these old Land Rovers.
At least its now behind you and you can be confident that you wont rip off the front of your truck on the next winching session.

Maybe we can get to test that theory on the next off-road adventure :wink: ..........