Time for this week's progress update.
I got tires of the duct tape upholstery and adjusters on the original driver's seat getting frozen in a position where my head touched the headliner while driving, so I broke down and installed the *mint* original driver's seat from my red CQ in the lifted car. It is quite possibly the nicest factory Audi piece of this car. LOL
Also, I need to stop taking pictures with my cell phone- they are pretty terrible.


In driving the car around last week I discovered that I had a stuck thermostat and a faulty G62 coolant temp sensor, so I replaced both of those.

And then finally I got started on the front bumper. After spending way too much time looking for ideas on Subaru forums, I convinced myself that a winch was a good idea..... you know.... just in case....
So I bought a 5000 lb winch, went and bent some tubes at my buddies shop, and got to work.

I tried mocking up a bunch of different ideas for the winch/bumper combo so try and find the best one. Ultimately I decided I didn't like anything I could mock up with zip ties and tubes and decided to mount the winch first then work around it.
Here are some of the concepts I tried but didn't much like:


I liked this one the best...

To mount the winch I built a new cross-support out of A series structural steel angle which is tied in to the original bumper shock bases to give a solid anchor to the frame rails. 100% of this fabrication work was done with 3 tools in my garage: a 4.5" angle grinder, a drill press, and my TIG welder. I'm amazed how much can be done with those simple tools (though it does take a lot longer...).







And finally, here it is on the car:



I welded the original bumper mount/shock solid and plan to mount the new tube bumper/brush guard to them in the same way that the orignal bumper center section mounted. This will keep it all easily removable for servicing the car, but still very stout and secure.
I trimmed up the bumper cover for the winch opening and set a tube on top, close to where it will be mounted. I plan to do a hoop of tube coming down from this which goes around the bottom of the winch fairlead. This will also serve as the forward mounting for the front skid plate when I get to that point.


I'm pretty happy how it's coming along so far!
