That is likely what you will have to do.
In this picture, you can
almost see how it was mounted before, there is a piece of metal that the winch sits on itself, with another piece of approx. 2" wide flat stock welded to the front, and angling back to the botom of the bash plate for support. I think they had another piece of steel incorporated, but can't remember exactly.
My setup in a nutshell:
The Wolverine came with a horizontal frame brace, a piece of flat steel welded in between the front frame rails. I welded a piece of angle iron to this for mounting the new base to. You can see the sides of this angle iron in the following picture:
You can also see a second piece of flat steel welded between the frame rails above the winch base piece, this was done basically for extra support on the front end and add an extra brace to the base to preven any possible movement or flexing. Now it comes down to mounting the actual base. It is welded to the angle iron as well as the new horizontal frame brace. The piece of metal which was previously welded to the bottom of the bash plate just had to be slightly rebent and welded to the bottom of the original horizontal frame brace.
Like I said, that is it in a nutshell, and I can get the pics this weekend. You can get a rough idea of locations of parts based on the location of bolt holes for the bash plate and front bumper. I have to tell you, there was a good bit of time spent on mocking this all up with vise grips to get a good fitment under the front bumper. I wanted the rollers to be as close to the bottom tube of the bumper as I could get it without getting
too close. As you can see, I eventually got it pretty close
Biggest downside to my setup is it is permanent. It is probably about as rugged as any other out there, but it is there until it gets removed with a cutting torch or grinder/cutoff wheel.
