Undercover Hidden Winch Install on 2013 DCSB

Here's a brief writeup on the Undercover Hidden Winch Install on my 2013 DCSB; it's a neat product, and Brian at Undercover Hidden Winch systems is a nice guy and easy to talk to.
I first saw one of these reviewed here, saw where the TW member had added some nice recovery points; snagged pix off his thread and sent them to Brian, who then built mine that way. Sweet.

First thing you have to do is get the front bumper cover off.
This is not as easy as it sounds
I jacked the truck up, put it on stands, and took off the front wheels as step one, so that I could
take off the inner wheel wells as step two
so I could see inside and start taking off the eleventy-million different fasteners holding the cover on.
Some are screws, some are little blue wedges you compress and pull, some are really cool two piece deals you pull the center up on and they come out.
I had all of these out, according to the factory manual, and yet the cover wouldn't come off. The hold up was two "snap together" attachment points right under the headlights. I just wasn't pulling hard enough
(I'll post a pic of these later!)
The next step is to pull off the aluminum factory sub-frame-bumper-kinda thing. Six bolts, three on each side. easy.
Then, you mount the UCHWM, using the factory fasteners, and some larger washers supplied. I presume these help spread the load out some when winching.
The instructions say to mount the winch to the UCHWM first, but I was using a Warn M8000s, and it fit in there easily without mounting it to the UCHWM, and as I anticipated taking ot off and on several times during fitment, I didn't put the winch on first. YMMV.
As it turns out, I fitted the UCHWM and left it, so I could have. Live and learn...You do want to mount your fairlead to the UCHWM now, as you'll have to trim around it.
The next step is to modify your bumper cover to allow fitting it back on the truck with the UCHWM on the truck. This was easy, but time consuming.
I used an hand held plunge cutter to do this; this guy: with this blade: This will be the best $25 you spend on this project.

Before you start cutting on the bumper cover, remove the black "grill" portion, leaving just the bumper cover. The grill will cover this, so you can "cut larger" and it won't matter; because, again, the grill will cover that.
I then put two big blobs of grease on the end of the recovery points, and held the bumper cover up as nearly in place as it would go; and used the grease transfer to the cover as the starting place to cut for the recovery points.
Once you have those holes cut, you can get the cover closer to fitment, and them mark and trim around the UCHWM and fairlead.
Once you have the cover fitted to the truck, you can turn to the "grill portion." I took more time measuring and cutting with this; and this really was the most time consuming portion of the project, short of wiring it.
You can see in one of the pix below all the pieces I cut off to each the end result.
Once I had everything fitting well, I pulled it all off one more time and mount and test the winch. I fitted the control box and had a friend hold power and ground to the battery and powered the winch in and out: cool, it worked...
Then, my buddy and I spent a bunch of time eyeballing where the box would fit, and finally settled on next to the brake booster as there were two holes already there tapped for bolts. This gets the control box waaaay out of the weather.
Further from the winch on one hand, closer to the battery on the other.
So, we went to the parts store, bought a new set of jumper cables, and made all new cables from the winch to the box and from the box to the battery and ground, as the Warn lengths were all wrong.
We then fabbed a bracket to go from the firewall to the Warn mounting bracket.
Last step is to fit the synthetic rope to the winch. One small allen head bolt holds down a button that holds the end loop of the rope to the drum. You attache the hook end to a tree ot some other handy thing, and power the cable onto the drum carefully and neatly with assitance from your helper;
and; you're done.

Til your or a buddy get stuck!

Pix here in a few...

 

Factory bumper off
Undercover mount on

 

There's actually a fair amount of room in there

 

Shot of trimming the grill in progress

 

The many bits cut off the cover and then the grill, in the order they came off

 

Finished front end shot

 

Hawse fair lead fit

 

Template for bracket

 

finished bracket and warn bracket...note bolts welded to bracket....

 

Joined brackets

 

Brackets on firewall

 

Control mounted

 

Nice job. This may be next for me too.

 

Subd.

 

Great write up on a cool looking product.

 

Thanks!
It's not "an extreme truck," so I didn't want the extra weight of a big bumper; and, I don't need the ground clearance afforded by one. This keeps it all kinda stealth.
I bought a Warn Wireless remote control to plug into the control. box...I saw where other guys had wired power and, in/out switches to the dash, and the wireless controller seemed a lot easier

 

Thanks for the great information... I'm researching my options and the Undercover setup looks like the real deal.

 

I'd seen some guys add winch in/out switches to the blanks on the dash.
I gave that some thought, and then the guy at Undercover Hidden Winch mentioned he used a Warn wireless remote control.
I had no idea there was such a thing!
I found one on Amazon for $69 and ordered it.
Receiver plugs into the control box, the wireless controller is small; they both fit handily in the center console and take little room.


It's absolutely super cool; and gives you the added advantage of being able to hand it to a spotter. It's supposed to be good for 50 yards or so.

 

On the trail this weekend.
Tornado Alley Cruisers/TLCA Event at SMORR