During my trip into on to Adams Lake a few weeks ago I got very stuck in a mud hole. While attempting to winch the Toyota FJ Cruiser out of the hole I bent the front bumper mounts. The All Pro Off-road front bumper places the winch about 4” above the center line of the frame and bumper mounts. This creates a situation where the winch uses the bumper as a lever on the mounting points. This is illustrated in the following diagram.

The pull shifted the top of the bumper forward about ¼”.  Once home it was time to fix the damage by modify the FJ Cruiser bumper mounts to prevent them from being bent again. The first step was to remove the front bumper. I used our basket ball hoop as a point to hang the bumper from. This facilitated quick removal.

Once the bumper was removed I was able to inspect the mounting plates on the frame. They seemed to still be in good condition. A little work with a 5 lb hammer and I was able to get them bent back to the original position.

The first order of business was to reinforce the mounting point. To do this I cut 2 plates from 1/8” steel to be welded to the mount point. This doubled the thickness of the mount to ¼”.

Once the plates were completed I removed all but 2 of the mounting studs and remounted the bumper using grade 8 bolts. The next step was to fabricate a reinforcement brackets for the bumper. The goal with the bracket was to shift some of the stress to a bolt point on the FJ Cruiser frame. I used 1/4″ stock to fabricate the brackets.

I am hoping that the combination of the reinforced mounting plates and the addition of the bracket will eliminate any future issues with the winch bending the frame mounts.