Warn 9500i Winch Installation on Maximus-3 Winch Mount

First and foremost, this page details some steps to get our Warn HS9500i to fit onto our Rubicon X. Most winches are not as large or as wide as the Warn HS9500i. Your best bet is to contact Maximus-3, tell them what winch you have or plan to buy, and let them help you. We were unsure and the guys at Maximus-3 were very helpful with a few things that we were going to have to deal with. The Maximus-3 Winch Mount fits most common winches in either a center mounting position or the offset position. Restrictions of space for a specific winch size are due to the available space on the Wrangler front end. The Maximus-3 design attempts to accommodate a variety of winches and installation options.

Our Warn HS9500i has been a great winch over the years. It’s been pushed hard many, many times. It’s helped us through hard mud extractions, including pulling out a backhoe from a swamp and pulling a Jeep with a blown engine up a long, rocky trail where we had to anchor the winching vehicle to trees just to get stable footing. It’s been one of the most dependable winches we have ever used. That being said it is BIG. We weren’t sure if it was going to fit on this Rubicon X. But somehow we got it to fit and fit well.

Due to our winch width, we would have had a much easier install if we opted for the off-center mounting position. However we really wanted to center the winch for visual aesthetics and center the Hawse Fairlead. So after a little time measuring and test fitting, we came to the conclusion that we could center mount the HS9500i. After a couple of minor modifications to the bumper flange, shaving down the winches cooling fins and some minor trimming of the mounting holes on the mount, we were able to center mount our winch.

Again, these steps are only necessary to our earlier model Warn HS9500i and certainly not typical of a winch install on a Wrangler Rubicon. This is really only to document the fun we had shoehorning this massive winch into our Rubicon X. We rarely decline a challenge!

Installing our Warn HS9500i Our trusty Warn 9500i is a large behemoth and very wide. We could have mounted it off-center with no issues. But we wanted it centered. It required a little creative trimming to get it to fit in the centered position.

Minor trimming for Our HS9500i To get our 9500i to fit in the center position, we had to trim a corner off the bumper flange as marked in the photo above. We also had to shave the lower, inner corner of cooling fins on the winch to get it to slide to the left as far as possible. We never see those fins anyway so trimming them didn’t matter.

Warn HS9500i Installed on Mount Once we had the Winch over as far to passenger as physically possible, we cleared the Maximus-3 Winch Mount centered bolt holes. With the winch solenoid housing centered to the grill and consequently centered to the soon-to-be-installed Hauser Fairlead, we were on to bolting it up.

We will finish up the wiring of the Winch a little later in the project. First we want to continue with Mounting the Maximus-3 D-Ring Loops