Uh-oh! What on earth has happened that we need to dismantle The Falcon?
This week we took delivery of our packages from Gigglepin4x4 in the UK and if you had told me 15 years ago that I would be so excited to open a box containing a bunch of new car parts I would have looked at you aghast. Strengthened shafts, bolts and switches and most excitingly.....a brand new winch from Goodwinch. All provided by a generous benefactor who has chosen to remain anonymous - Asante sana, Bwana!
So, why dismantle? Because the front winch compartment is not quite big enough...by about 1.5 inches. The box on top contains the solenoid (steps down the power from the battery to the motor) and that was always going to be moved into the driver's cab.
The solution is to get the grinder back out, remove the bottom plate and then weld it back into place higher up. This means the middle bumper bar also has to come off to allow strong hands to manhandle levers so another good few hours work to make it fit. We even considered a new bull-bar but decided that was just too much effort. We would lose the sliding bars as well and in future years these might be replaced with a lighter aluminium skid pan.
The rear winch motor had broken contacts and the cost of repairing them was the same as a new BowWinch 2 motor. This one fitted in nicely but we will have to re-position the rope exit fairways as the winch is no longer in the middle. Nothing is simple.
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