What did you do to your TJ today?

bumper And winch finally!

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I have never heard of Rugcel winches. I went to their website but they don't put out much information on the company or on the winches. It looks good. I'd be interested in how it holds up to use and the elements so please if possible, give us a 1 yr assessment on how it's doing.
 
I have never heard of Rugcel winches. I went to their website but they don't put out much information on the company or on the winches. It looks good. I'd be interested in how it holds up to use and the elements so please if possible, give us a 1 yr assessment on how it's doing.
Funny story actually. I was surfing amazon one day looking at winches. I didn’t noticed but I accidentally clicked the “buy now” button. Fast forward a few days and I come home to this on the door step lol.. 12,000lbs wireless with synthetic rope. I said what the heck and threw it on. I was in the market for a winch but had my mind set on a smittybilt Xrc gen3. I haven’t made a pull with it yet but Ill will definitely keep posted!
 
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How was the mounting to the factory transfer case skid? I tried contacting them when I was looking for one a while back, but they never answered the phone or returned emails. I ended up going with the Savvy skid. Only required lining the skid up and drilling holes in the factory skid.
I did the same thing you did, just lined it up and drilled 4 holes, fits really well. That was really the easy part of it all. You can see it on the left of that pic a little bit.
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Drove Ripley to town yesterday and it was blowing a gale, 20-25 mph gusts. My hood was doing some serious jumping around. The driver side more so than the passengers side. I made the pass side aluminum base a little taller the driver side which made it tighter. It looks like I need to redo my drivers side aluminum base or tighten up the spring inside the latch if I can. I still like the old school ss Cj8 latches better than the rubber Tj latches.
After observing my hood doing the Jeep wave to passing trucks, I replaced the Stretch Armstrong rubber pieces with the Daystar poly version. That was before the hood vents but so far so good.
 
Wrestled/massaged/persuaded the rusted rear bumper bolts that are located underneath. “Only” took half a day and a full can of PB blaster for those two bolts. I feel like I gained so much knowledge and experience removing rusted bolts from when I broke a couple rear upper shock bolts lol. Hard lessons learned.

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If I had an engine skid I might consider an oil drain system but at this point I wonder how much old oil may be left in the pan with these systems.
I thought of that as well. I actually thought that after draining with this type drain plug, after nearly everything is out of the pan you could just take this plug out and the flow for the remaining oil would be pretty slow and should just drain through the opening in the skid.
 
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I thought of that as well. I actually thought that after draining with this type drain plug, after nearly everything is out of the pan you could just take this plug out and the flow for the remaining oil would be pretty slow and should just drain through the opening in the skid.

I think it would be hard to get the valve back on securely because the skid would be in the way for tightening it up.

There might be room at certain angles though.
 
If I had an engine skid I might consider an oil drain system but at this point I wonder how much old oil may be left in the pan with these systems.

On the one on my Ram3500, I measured the pan bung thickness and then trimmed the threaded nipple down to match the thickness of the bung. Other wise it would’ve kept about an extra 5/16” depth of oil in the pan from draining. I’ll be checking this one as well when I go to install it.