Hello Lads,

I have a 1999 Discovery series 1, Purchased in Feb. 99.

It came with a wrap-around bush bar on the front.
I recently purchased a Warn x8000i winch for my rover and need to mount it. The bar I have will not accept a winch and I need to get a front bar that will.
Talking to my local land Rover dealer here in British Columbia, they inform me that the bush bar for w winch has been discontinued.
I will accept either the full wrap-around type or even the "A" bar style, as long as they are designed for a winch mounting.
If anyone out there has some ideas, please help.

Cheers,

Undertaker

 

Talk to UrbanPanzer, he has a nice write up on a winch install, he has a DII as well.

 

I have the same brush bar setup on the front end of my 97 D1 and I have decided to go with an ARB full replacement bumper.

 

The only problems with the ARBsystem are: The winch mount is only for a separate-sonenoid style winch and the ARB will not allow the proper deployment of factoryairbags.
These are 2 reasons why I didn't go that route.

I appreciate your comments, thank you.

Undertaker

 

Yeah I have the same wraparound on my D2 and it's good for two things: looking cool, and holding my off road HID's. That's about it. If you're going to need a winch you should have an ARB or RTE type front bumper to go with it. Some say it's the first mod you should do to your truck...

 

ARB does make a SRS friendly version. But you said that it wont work with the winch that you have. But for anyone else...

 

ARB bumper for the D1 is airbag compatible. And I know that the Warn XD9000i will fit in the ARB bumper which has the integrated solenoid. I swear by the XD9000i.

 

You could save a LOT of money, forget the ARB bumper and do a "discrete" mount on your D1 the same as I have on my D2. Don't get me wrong the ARB bumpers are nice !! (especially the safari for a D2) but the cost is quite a lot !!.

The problem is, you have an integrated winch, you "can" mount them in the discrete mounts, but it requires some cutting of the front cross panel to clear the solenoids, how much depends on the size / make of winch. This is one of the reasons I bought a winch where the solenoids could be moved up into the engine bay out the way of mud / dirt water etc.

Heres my page to give you an "idea" of the discrete mounting.

http://www.discovery2.co.uk/winch_html

The "Other" option, is buy the Land Rover mounting kit that puts the winch up in front of the bumper, but you would have to loose your bull bar to fit that and it does reduce the approach angle quite a bit as do ARB winch bumpers when compared to the factory ones.

 

Thank you for the information and the detailed instructions Panzer, I appreciate your knowledge.
I am probably going with the higher Land Rover mount which you first mentioned, it would make more sense in my application. As I wrote earlier, my x8000i from Warn has a built in solenoid so a discrete mount is a lot tougher.
Thanks again,

Undertaker

 

Offcourse, if you only recently purchased the winch, you "could" exchange it for just an M8000 ?? instead, then the descrete mount can be done and youcan retain the bull bar as well