At the beginning of the May, over the course of two afternoons and evenings, my buddy Rob and I dove into the installation of the Chief Products Hidden Winch system in the front end of my WK2 Grand Cherokee Trailhawk. I had been speaking with Bill Mackin, the owner of Australia-based Chief Products, since the beginning of March in regards to getting one of their mounts test-fitted in a 2017 Grand Cherokee to see what kind of adjustments, if any, would need to be made for the new generation grills and front-ends. I reached out to Warn to inquire as to sponsorships for a winch, and after speaking with someone from their Sponsorship team, was offered a steep discount on the 10-S Platinum for installation on the Trailhawk.
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Having never taken the front end off of the Jeep before, and being used to the much more accessible front end of a Wrangler, I did some research as to what went into taking the lower fascia and the upper bumper off. Chief Products had a good write-up for the fascia, and a quick YouTube video showed how simple it was to remove the bumper… we were in business. It’s easy enough, with a few quarter-turn screws under the fascia, two plastic rivets per side in the wheel well, the fascia then pops off from the bumper. The bumper itself requires removing a small hex-head nut in each wheel well, and two small plastic rivets along the top of the radiator brace bar.
We decided to do the installation at Rob’s house, as I’m still in the process of getting my garage at home organized enough and he has a large driveway that easily accommodated our needs. I opened the shipping boxes and laid out our components on an old section of drywall he had in the shop, and we took inventory of what we had to work with.
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Having never taken the front end off of the Jeep before, and being used to the much more accessible front end of a Wrangler, I did some research as to what went into taking the lower fascia and the upper bumper off. Chief Products had a good write-up for the fascia, and a quick YouTube video showed how simple it was to remove the bumper… we were in business. It’s easy enough, with a few quarter-turn screws under the fascia, two plastic rivets per side in the wheel well, the fascia then pops off from the bumper. The bumper itself requires removing a small hex-head nut in each wheel well, and two small plastic rivets along the top of the radiator brace bar.
We decided to do the installation at Rob’s house, as I’m still in the process of getting my garage at home organized enough and he has a large driveway that easily accommodated our needs. I opened the shipping boxes and laid out our components on an old section of drywall he had in the shop, and we took inventory of what we had to work with.
From there we disconnected the ACC camera via the two fasteners that hold it to the bottom of the OEM bumper. There’s a small wiring harness that needs to be unclipped, then it was placed to the side well out of harms way (I don’t want to know how much that camera costs). We then went about removing all of the fasteners that hold the OEM bumper to the Jeep itself, as highlighted by the red circles in the photo below. With the Styrofoam bar and metal backing removed, we took off the plastic protecting pieces from the air suspension system and the windshield washer fluid reservoir. Last to do here was remove the air duct pieces from in front of the radiator, and move the wiring looms as far out of the way as possible for access to the front end.
The majority of the Chief Products Hidden Winch system is comprised of 3 main pieces (comprised of 5 individual parts). The winch cradle spans the mid-section in front of the radiator, and holds the winch in place. There are two frame mount brackets, one for each side, and finally two tow-hook mounting brackets that sandwich between the cradle and frame brackets. By starting with the frame brackets, installing the mounting fasteners without tightening down, we were able to then install the tow hook pieces and the winch cradle without issue, putting the hardware in to hold the entire assembly together while we figured out how the other pieces assembled.
This was getting towards the end of our first day (night, actually… we were working by the light of the flood light in the driveway) and we were both pretty tired. We struggled for a while with the tow hooks before I called Bill at Chief Products and asked him if we were missing something. In hind sight, had we played around a bit more with the pieces we would have realized that the OEM tow hooks need to be swapped to the opposite side of their original installation location, and flipped over to work with the new brackets. Laymen’s terms: move the driver hook to the passenger side, passenger hook to the driver side, flip 180 degrees, and install to Chief Products tow hook spacers.
At that point we called it a night, put the front bumper and ACC camera back on without the lower fascia, and I drove home without incident or any pieces falling off.
When we picked up on day 2, we were determined to finish the project before it got late again. It was around 16h00 by the time Rob got home from work and we got started, but we made solid progress as the sun made its way across the sky.
Now that the tow hooks had been figured out, we were able to move forward with tightening the entire Hidden Winch system down, and began the process of test-fitting the OEM Trailhawk bumper. In comparing it with the Limited / Overland / Laredo bumpers it seems that the grills is much more sloped back. I can’t comment specifically because I do not own any of the other models, but I do know that the guy who installed my clear bra on the WK2 made a comment about it being different from any other grille he’d ever seen. As such, Bill and his team were intrigued to know whether or not this system would work on the new model.
As we re-installed the bumper and fascia, we noticed that there were parts of the winch cradle that were pushing out against the both trim pieces, to the point where they would not fit back into place. We looked at our options for trimming the back side of each piece, and “modified” the bumper by bending the mounting tabs for the parking sensor looms upwards, essentially lightly breaking them to alleviate some rubbing on the winch cradle. The cradle is fit with 6 mounting points for the bolts that attach to the frame mount brackets, with each of those 6 points being U shaped, opening towards the front of the Jeep. Due to the space in the U-shapes, Rob and I decided to push the entire cradle backwards ½” or so to fit better behind the bumper and fascia. In talking to Bill at Chief, their 2015 model did not have room in front of the radiator to move back the way that we were able to in the 2017.
Once it was pushed back, we re-installed the bumper without issue, and popped the fascia back in as well. Knowing it would all fit, we turned our sights towards trimming out space for the fairlead to rest against the winch cradle mounting points. Initially, I was under the impression that this would be alike the other Rocky Road winch mount, with the fairlead being in the middle of the bumper by the license plate bracket. To my delight, it barely touched the bumper, and instead the majority of trimming came out of the fascia. I made a small cut, maybe ½” tall into the bottom most portion of the bumper itself, and then went to work tracing the fairlead to the fascia. With their final fairlead design, Chief now includes a template for future installers to use when making their cuts.
Now that the tow hooks had been figured out, we were able to move forward with tightening the entire Hidden Winch system down, and began the process of test-fitting the OEM Trailhawk bumper. In comparing it with the Limited / Overland / Laredo bumpers it seems that the grills is much more sloped back. I can’t comment specifically because I do not own any of the other models, but I do know that the guy who installed my clear bra on the WK2 made a comment about it being different from any other grille he’d ever seen. As such, Bill and his team were intrigued to know whether or not this system would work on the new model.
As we re-installed the bumper and fascia, we noticed that there were parts of the winch cradle that were pushing out against the both trim pieces, to the point where they would not fit back into place. We looked at our options for trimming the back side of each piece, and “modified” the bumper by bending the mounting tabs for the parking sensor looms upwards, essentially lightly breaking them to alleviate some rubbing on the winch cradle. The cradle is fit with 6 mounting points for the bolts that attach to the frame mount brackets, with each of those 6 points being U shaped, opening towards the front of the Jeep. Due to the space in the U-shapes, Rob and I decided to push the entire cradle backwards ½” or so to fit better behind the bumper and fascia. In talking to Bill at Chief, their 2015 model did not have room in front of the radiator to move back the way that we were able to in the 2017.
Once it was pushed back, we re-installed the bumper without issue, and popped the fascia back in as well. Knowing it would all fit, we turned our sights towards trimming out space for the fairlead to rest against the winch cradle mounting points. Initially, I was under the impression that this would be alike the other Rocky Road winch mount, with the fairlead being in the middle of the bumper by the license plate bracket. To my delight, it barely touched the bumper, and instead the majority of trimming came out of the fascia. I made a small cut, maybe ½” tall into the bottom most portion of the bumper itself, and then went to work tracing the fairlead to the fascia. With their final fairlead design, Chief now includes a template for future installers to use when making their cuts.
Once we were comfortable with the trimming, we moved on to the installation of the winch. The Zeon 10-S Platinum is described by Warn as being “built for those who push the limits-with double the durability, 20% faster line speed, and extreme IP68-rated waterproofing. The Advanced Wireless Remote controls not only the winch, but also the clutch and other accessories. With a 10,000 lb. pulling capacity, high-performance motor package, and Spydura® Synthetic Rope, you'll be equipped to go places others only dream about.” – for this application, it’s perfect, especially with the electrically controlled clutch. Whereas my other winch sits on the open front of my Wrangler, I don’t have access on the WK2 to engage and disengage the electric vs. free-spool setting. With the remote, this makes the hidden factor of the winch all that more feasible.
We followed Warn’s instructions for mounting the winch and spooling the Spydura line, outfitting the end of the synthetic rope with my new Factor55 Flatlink winch hook. Rated with a breaking point far beyond what I’ll ever be utilizing, the easy D-ring attachment point and red powdercoating make it a sleek addition to the front end of the Grand Cherokee. Once the line was appropriately attached we spooled it in, maintaining tension on the line by hand and wrapping it cleanly. While I don’t currently have any auxiliary lighting planned for the grille of the Trailhawk, the Zeon Platinum offers 2x 12v ports to plug auxiliary lights into, to then be controlled on/off by the wireless remote. I may someday add some lights in there, at which point this will be a phenomenal way to avoid running wiring through the firewall.
I took a couple dozen shots of the front end from every angle I could think of, and then we moved forward with re-installing the ACC camera on a Chief Products supplied bracket to the rear bolts holding the winch into the cradle. We had to wallow out the mounting bracket holes a little bit to fit what I assume is a revised camera mount dimensions, but notes and photographs were taken to show the guys at Chief.
Once the camera was good to go and re-harnessed, we re-installed the front bumper securing it back into the wheel wells and above the radiator by reversing the removal process. Putting the fascia back on we realized we had a little more trimming to do to get the outer edges by the wheels to fit appropriately. We got it to fit that night, but after driving last week with regular use, I realized I have to go back and re-trim some of the area in front of the fairlead mount to get the clips to sit properly back in the bumper above the fascia.
In the almost year since installing the Chief Products Hidden Winch system, I've had no issues other than craning in my neck every time I turn around in the grocery store parking lot to check out the Jeep as I walk away. The pieces are secure, and the front end looks sexy as all get-out with the Factor55 FlatLink hinting that there’s a lot of pulling power under that front bumper.
I've had opportunities to use the winch and pull WK2 uphill in bad terrain. The system, comprised of the mounting bracket, winch, hook, and remote performed flawlessly. I go forwards into the backcountry feeling more confident in the Jeep’s capabilities with this new self-recovery capacity in place.
Again a huge thanks to both Chief Products, Factor55, and Warn for their amazing support and incredible products that made this installation and self-recovery abilities possible.
I've had opportunities to use the winch and pull WK2 uphill in bad terrain. The system, comprised of the mounting bracket, winch, hook, and remote performed flawlessly. I go forwards into the backcountry feeling more confident in the Jeep’s capabilities with this new self-recovery capacity in place.
Again a huge thanks to both Chief Products, Factor55, and Warn for their amazing support and incredible products that made this installation and self-recovery abilities possible.