Hi guys, I just added the smittybuilt XRC bumper and the X20 winch to my JKU. It is the first bumper winch I have ever owned and the winch and bumper combo look great on the jeep. Was at the beach (Nagshead) this weekend and pulled someone out with it with no issues other than cable spooling. I have two questions that I hope you more experienced people can help with:

1: when mounting the bumper there are the 4 bolts that mount to the end of the frame assembly. no problem, those are in. there are also 4 carrage head bolts that the directions say to mount to the bottom of the jeep frame cross member. I did not install these as I see no purpose for these bolts and I have about 1/2" gap between the bumper and the cross member. do I need to install these or am I fine?

2: how do you guys get your cable to spool up right. mine seems to want to clump in the middle? I did unspool and respool as the directions with the winch directed when I first installed and it looked fine but when I used it to pull the guy out ( he was in a chevy taho buried up to his truck chassis) it didn't spool in right.

any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated.

 

I don't know about the bolts. You have to keep tension on your cable to have it coil up right if it over laps it will crush your cable and it will become trash. I would replace it with the nylon cable lots easier to deal with and won't kill you if it snaps

 

Pull the line all of the way out. Put on some gloves and use the remote and slowly pull in the line as you feed the line evenly back and forth on the spool. As for the bumper, it does need to be attached to the cross member for more rigidity.

 

Thanks for the comments.........I am considering the synthic cable.......just not ready to pull the trigger yet.....as for the bolts. I will craw under and look at them again.