“I mounted this winch plate to a new 2025 Jeep Gladiator Rubicon X with factory steel bumper. The winch mount appears to be well constructed of ¼” plate. The install was fairly straight forward. The kit includes two ¼” spacers that are intended to be mounted between the flanges on the existing frame and the winch plate itself. Doing so moves the winch (and bumper) ¼” forward, affording more space for the WARN Zeon 12k winch. As I was mounting an HF Badlands Apex 12k winch, on which the positive cable protrudes out the back of the case and impinges on the painted grill, I decided to use the plates to mitigate that problem by mounting the winch as far forward as possible, which worked quite well. HOWEVER, doing so introduced a couple of new issues:
1) The spacers have the effect of moving the bumper ¼” forward. Doing so makes the four studs which are mounted on the bumper on each side (eight in total) effectively ¼” shorter when they protrude through the mating flanges on each frame rails. The upper studs in particular are precariously short as it is and make a difficult job of reinstalling the nuts even more so.
2) The front skid plate, which must be removed along with the bumper prior to winch plate installation, now becomes a bit of a problem as the two bolt holes in the back which accommodate bolting to the frame rails further behind the bumper are now ¼” too far forward. If you choose to use the spacer plates you MUST drill the appropriate holes in the skid plate ¼” back to allow the plate to be properly mounted to the frame rail. And you MUST do this before attempting mounting, otherwise you are going to have to remove the five bolts you just mounted on the bumper and pull the skid plate back off. Ask me how I know!
In hindsight, I probably would have avoided all of this frustration by NOT using the spacer plates when installing this kit. I’d rather deal with the sharp bend of the power cable than deal with the hassle of threading those bumper mounting nuts onto precariously shortened studs.
Other than that, the procedure is pretty straight forward, which is good as no instructions were included. There are ample videos on YouTube however. As I have not had a chance to do an actual recovery with this winch plate yet, I cannot really comment on its performance, other than to say that it looks robust and I have no reason to doubt that it will be up to the task. Would I recommend it? Absolutely!”
“As advertised the winch plate required no modifications to install on my JLR everything lined up perfectly. The most difficult part was re-installing the bumper because I chose a Warn Zeon 8s winch. It is a tight fit and there is almost no room to tighten the hardware closest to the winch. If I could do it over again I would have chosen a Warn M8.”
“I had a competitors winch plate on that like most you need 3 hands to install. The winch never quite fit right in the factory bumper even with modification. Ordered this one and install was straight forward and easy. Winch (VR10) fits great with no issues. Impressing with how low the winch sits in the factory bumper.”
“Great fit and finish Insatlled with HF apex 12k winch. Had to trim winch handle for bumper fitment. Did not have to use the bumper spacer plates. Only reason for 4 stars is missing the 5 m8x1.25 nuts to re-install the bolts for the removed cover plate . The Warn kit includes these nuts.”
“I am extremely pleased with the Artec JL winch mount. It is very beefy works well with my Smittybilt X20 10K winch and the install was super easy. Given the install issues Ive heard about with other popular stock steel bumper winch mounts on the market I was very relieved at how well everything fit without needing to bend or grind anything and most importantly the quality is top notch. Thanks Artec”
