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OK, this has been a bit of a labour of love for a few weeks now. Still in the prototype stage as I type, but I have a spare evening so I figure it's time for some admin and an update on progress. So, wossis then? Well, it's a winch mount / tough bumper for the Axial SCX10 G6 Rubicon that has been my go-to rig for trail duties for a few years now. For why? Various reasons. 1) The stock bumper isn't perfectly flat, so it's not easy to mount the winch on it. The 3-Racing winch has a big metal base plate with built-in fairlead, and it doesn't sit right on the G6 bumper. 2) The stock bumper (and mount) are flexible ABS. Good for avoiding breakages on the trails, bad for winch duties. In fact with the ground anchor hooked over the roll cage for stowage, the entire bumper twists and looks ugly. 3) I have Proline Flat Iron XL tyres with a huge 120mm diameter, which catches on the corners of the stock bumper. So, to begin with, I found this thing: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3489699 To start with, I printed it out in grey resin and offered it up. It looks cool enough but a) the mounting posts were too close together as printed and 2) the bumper sits a little too low for my lifted body. I figured the whole thing would look better if I lifted and deepened it, as well as adding a direct-to-chassis mount in place of the post-style mounting to reduce flex during winching and stowage.

I'm hoping someone on here with an engineering background can give me some advice re winch ropes. I've decided put a winch in a scratch built skidder I'm building instead of fitting it with a grapple. I'm thinking of using stainless steel cable for the winch rope, and wondering what sort or bend radius I can expect for 1mm or 2mm diameter stainless steel cable. I'm going to want to be able to drag somewhere in the region of 15-20KG of wood on the winch so wondering if 1mm cable will be strong enough. I'm hoping to use a winch drum of around 25-30mm diameter if I can get away something that small. I'm thinking I should be able to get around 7m of cable on a drum 30mm wide (PI*D*width for 1mm cable, is this right ??) in about 3 complete wraps on the drum). any advice would be great, also, what to people normally have fitted to the crawler after market winches ?