When I bought the D90 it had an ARB front bumper that is highly sought after. The ARB is an all steel bumper with marker lights, mounts for driving/fog lights, winch mount, license plate mount, recovery points, and event some aux mounts for more lights or radio antennas. So while my Defender had the perfect bumper it was not optioned with a winch or working driving/fog lights. Frankly it looked a little sad….
I decided to ditch the extra large non-working Hella lights, but they did inspire me to keep a retro look. So I bought slightly smaller Hella incandescent lights as they fit the vintage of the car. I picked up a pair of Hella 4000 compact lights which act as great offroad driving lights. Given I had recently created a power tray with relays and fuses for just this kind of modification the wiring was easy. I placed the switch in my recently modified cubby box which is where all of my aux switches will live.
Next came the winch. I decided to get a Warn VR EVO 8-s (8k lb capacity) winch. I went with a synthetic line which is less retro but more practical and safe. What I love about this winch is that it can be mounted at just about any degree which is handle since the only way to mount this to the ARB is by rotating the housing 90 degrees. It also can have its control box separated from the winch body which is required once you mount it rotated. The wired remote can also be wireless which is great so that you can stand even further away during the recovery.
The biggest challenge was to find an easy way to mount the control box separated from the body….luckily Vice Design creates a wiring kit for this winch that allows you to mount the control box just about anywhere. I decided to mount the box right above the winch. This keeps an authentic look while fitting the ARB nicely. I replaced the line hook with a Factor55 FlatLink E (not very retro but a lot safer). My only regret is that I wish I had upgraded to the 10k winch (male ego at work here).
