Great write up! That's a very sharp looking Jeep. I'm loving the LED's and RRO bumper winch.

Let us know how it goes with your battery upgrade. I at minimum want to put in an Optima Yellowtop, hopefully an Odyssey AGM if I can afford it. I don't know what the biggest battery we can fit is.

I can't wait to see how that lift is going to look too!

 

another member here posted about a 34/78 size battery working, now i'm not sure if 34 and 78 are the same size, but when I was at Canadian tire, they had a size 34 that looked like it might fit.

Canadian tire's AGM batteries are manufactured by northstar batteries.
http://www.northstarsitetel.com/northstar/engine/index.php

As for the LED's they are very bright, But I think I should have went a big bigger, they look a bit tiny on the bar, I might upgrade them next year. They are good but you can always have bigger and better!

 

Batteries Plus in the USA carry an agm battery made by Northstar. I have one and it looks like the battery Canadian Tire sells. Great Build Thread with excellent photos. :smiley_thumbs_up:

 

Very cool build, Also dig the photos of the winch install, looks great!


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Thanks Tyler, very helpful. Looks nice, great pics!

 

Nice rig. I like how the newer Compass looks like with the same rims I've got on my 2010 Patriot. Pretty slick. And, is that you pulling a Cherokar out of something?

 

I was "pulling" out a 2014 Cherokee Trailhawk, he got buried in some really deep snow, and I could have just used a tow strap, but figured I should test the winch out. Pics were taken after I had pulled him out.

 

Lol, was it something the Compass could have taken? My Patriot's taken on snow at least a foot deep, for maybe a mile and a half. Kept up about 40mph the whole way.

 

Thanks to share the picture of instal ! WINCH POWER !!

 

Battery group 34 is the standard Mopar battery group. Group 78 is actually a GM battery group. I put an Optima yellow top in my 09 last December. I think mine is a group 25. They just measured the space and gave me the largest one that would fit. It's definitely bigger than the regular battery, since now you have to kinda force my battery cover into place.

 

Great write up! Nice work! It looks like you extended ( designed ) the bracket to mount the winch on to give some protection to the ac lines. Was there any room to re-use the steel from the original bumper to give more protection to areas in front of wheel wells, or would that be too complicated to fab.

 

Little update on my lighting situation.


I originally bought 4 18W 1250 lumens LED spot lights (in a spot combination) and mounted them on my Brush bar. While they were very bright they were somewhat overpowered by my LED headlights. So I decided I need to go big or go home. So I bought a 20” 240w LED lightbar rated at 20000 lumens. Finally got it all wired up last night. Basically I don’t need my headlights at all, it pretty much over powers them. You’ll notice in the videos it doesn’t look like either my lightbar or headlights project very far, but my phone camera sucks, so it was hard to get a real idea of how bright and far the through is. I’m going to try to adjust the lightbar tonight and get it aimed to my liking.

My old setup:

Current setup:

Apologies for the shaking video, hard to drive and operate switches at the same time.

This video starts with the low beams on, I switch to high beams, then the light bar on and off a few times.

Here I turn all the lights off, and just use the light bar

 

I love the winch behind the bumper. It looks awesome.

 

It gets lots of comments mostly "you put a winch on a compass" people tend to change their tune when i'm winching them out after

 

While putting my LED light bar on last night I ran the winch control wires through the firewall so I could leave the winch plugged in at all times. Unfortunately with the rocky road bumper and the winch tucked up nicely under the bumper you still need to access the free spool clutch on the winch.
My current solution is just leaving the tabs and screws off the plastic cover at the front of the engine bay.

It will be nice though to have the winch control ready at all times now

 

Very Nice Set up. I like it a lot! i love the new light bar as well. I see that it puts out some serious lighting! Im trying to figure out if i wanna get a light bar or rro lift first for mine.. because the lift you gotta get tires and then rims. and thats some serious money. I just dished out a good but getting my new sysem installed because i was tired of the stock stereo/ speakers.

 

Its a money pit that's for sure.

I didn't even buy this Compass initially to go all out and mod the piss out of it, and look what I did.

You don't HAVE to get new wheels and tires with the lift, sure in the end it might look better, but that 2 inches will really help IF you go offroading lots. If you aren't going too crazy into offroading, but you do lots of night driving, then I would point you in the direction of a lightbar.

 

what did you pay for the winch out the door. and was ut easy to install.

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I got mine for $300. rocky road has them for $389. As far as being easy to install; perhaps. Depending on your knowledge about tools and vehicles. RRO does give a little booklet deal that explains how to do everything. but you need to buy the rro winch kit and bumper if you want a winch. My Dad and I spent 2 days doing it all (not the whole 2day time, we took several breaks throughout the process too)

 

I paid, a bit over 600 for my winch, but I got it with the synthetic cable, and that costs big money.

The instructions included were really good, however the guy installing it for me had done so many other winch conversions on other vehicles he hardly looked at the instructions.

Depending on how handy you are, I would say 4 hours is a good time for installing the winch bumper.

 

what did the rro bumper without the winch

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After nearly ripping off my back bumper again last week, I had my friend cut the back off, similar to BondiBlue did I believe

Turned out really good, it works much better with my relocated magnaflow muffler as it doesn't sit down as far as the factory one. Should help out my departure angle now.

 

After nearly ripping off my back bumper again last week, I had my friend cut the back off, similar to BondiBlue did I believe

Turned out really good, it works much better with my relocated magnaflow muffler as it doesn't sit down as far as the factory one. Should help out my departure angle now.

Yup had to do this within 6 months of owning my Jeep...mud, sand etc just packs in there straining it down even further and then if you hit any sort of rut...rip it even torn my fender liner in the right rear corner so it's all hanging on by sliding it back over the 2 main supports and using zip ties to keep it there. I've had to re-attach it a couple times already...Come on TAG, ship already!

 

I dig it


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Very Nice! I have considered doing that to my Riot. I want to get a reese hitch but im pretty sure that the rear bumper fascia would be in the way.

 

This is going to show how little I know, but what is this "locker" you speak of. Im really trying to learn as much about off roading as I can haha.

 

Take a look at this thread for the locking diff:

http://www.jeeppatriot.com/forum/showthread.php?t=231202