From my 2013 JKU, I removed the American Expedition Vehicles (AEV) front bumper, on that build I was anticipating having winch so I already had the AEV winch plate adapter. For my first Father’s Day, my 11 month old daughter, Amelia bought me a Warn Zeon 10S winch.
This bumper was on my 2013 JKU since the Spring of 2015, it was a daily driver, and the snow/salt of winter roads in NorthEast Ohio dis start to show some surface rust. Dee was able to sand off some of the surface rust and we used AEV Touch Up Paint to make it look new again. I know in the future I will have to remove the bumper and get it striped and re-powder coated again.
My new Jeep came with Steel front MOPAR bumper, these are really nice, however, a word of advice, the LED fog lights that are in the steel bumper are NOT the same as the ones that are in the plastic bumper, the mounting tabs are different. This was a problem as the AEV bumper fog light brackets are designed for the plastic bumper. I was able to buy the Quadratec LED fog lights from a friend on Facebook.
The rest of the install went very smooth with no issues. The directions from Warn on how to install the winch were not very clear and had to use both AEV winch plate and Warns instructions to make sense.
One thing that I did install wrong was the way that I spooled the winch line. It is to go under the drum not on top. Easy fix, I just had to unspool the entire line and then respell it back on. When spooling your line, make sure that you have tension on the line. Its easy to have one person run the winch controller and another person pulling backwards, giving tension on the line.
https://www.expeditionteamoverland.com/2018-JKU-Rubicon-Recon-Gobi-Build/Front-Bumper-Install
Expedition Team Overland 