Fitting a winch to Factory Nissan Steel bar

hi guys

Has anyone done this, and is it a straight forward exercise?? Do you have to brace the front end or the bar in anyway, or is it a complete bolt on jobby. I have heard that removing the bullbar can be a bit of a mission.

Any tips or pointers would be appreciated.

Also one final thing, are you limited to any particular type or size of winch. I assume the Warn/ Ironman/ Premier 9000 ish sizes will work. I was going to get a Warn.

Jared

I forgot to clarify, its a Spanish ST-X D40

Mine's a Spanish ST-X D40 Dual Cab, and I fitted a winch to my Nissan-supplied steel bar.

Had to get longer high-tensile bolts for it, but other than that it was easy - the lower two bolts had to be 5mm longer, the upper two had to be 10mm longer.

hi there Tony, thanks for the reply,

My truck looks exactly the same as yours in so many ways, same bar, same lights, canopy, colour etc. I'll have to get some pictures up when I can. I haven't had it long.

I will grab a winch when I can and fit it. I'm also thinking about painting or powdercoating the car white to suit the rest of the car. I've seen some of the ARB bars done that way and they look sweet.

Can someone confirm if the Nissan Steel BBars are made by ARB?? I'm sure I read it some where, but couldn't confirm.

That's my understanding - ARB manufacture them and Nissan brand them. Common practice these days.

ARB's branded bar has a small difference where the indicators go to allow the placement of a daytime running light or fog light. I don't mind the look of it, either, but bought my bar as part of the package so an ARB-made Nissan-branded bar it was. I'm just a little stuck when it comes to finding a place to put the extra driving lights I'm considering.

Am contemplating fitting a winch to my Nissan winch bar, but I have a question about the mounting bracket welded inside of it.
To me it looks upside down so that when the winch is bolted in the cable, which runs out of the bottom of the spool, doesn't line up with the opening. However if it was running from the top of the spool it would line up with the fairlead.
Am I missing something here or is it possible that my bar is wrong. The instructions on the winch that I am looking at using say that the cable must come out of the bottom.

I had the same problem and ended up flipping the winch over to resolve it.

My manual didn't say that the cable had to come out this way or that - make sure you don't void your warranty on the winch.

So I did some research today to sort out what goes on with the winch bar winch mount.
Found out some interesting stuff:

1) Nissan parts department knows f-all about winch bars and winches, so don't waste yuor time there.

2) ARB sales people are stuckup arseholes who would rather be drinking coffee and watching Pat Callahan DVDs than trying to sell recovery gear. (Not that they know anything about recovery gear anyway) (just sayin')

3) TJM salesman was quite happy to talk about bars and winches all morning answering all sorts of questions relating to said bars and winches. (I learnt alot from him).

Moral of the story if you want to know anything about recovery talk to someone who actually uses the gear.

P.S. To put a winch into the OEM Nissan winch bar it is necessary to turn the winch upside down. (but alot of you blokes knew that anyway )