Been a busy couple of days to close out the new year. First I completed fabrication of the winch mount:
Then I had to put all back together. Much cutting of the cladding ensued...
I still need to find a place to put the control box and get everything wired up. There is also no fair lead installed yet because I have synthetic line and a hawse fair lead arriving Tuesday to replace the steel cable.
The real down side (but maybe not) was buying 20 feet 2x2x1/4 steel tube to make the winch mount. I only ended up using around 20 inches, but the steel suppliers here make you buy 20 feet at a time. Of course now I have steel for rock slidersor some other project I may yet get into.
This entire project should be called “built by Harbor Freight”. Badlands (ie: Harbor Freight) 12,000 pound winch. BadLands universal winch plate. Chicago Electric (also Harbor Freight) 170 Amp mig welder to stick everything together. Drill Master (also Harbor Freight) 4 1/2 inch angle grinder with cutting cutting disks. Even the ratchet, breaker bar, and sockets used came from from Harbor Freight.
So what did all of this cost?
Angle grinder: $10 with coupon.
Welder: $150 with coupon.
Hand Tools: Around $60 for everything.
Winch Plate: $50 (I didn’t have a coupon)
Winch: $200 (open box special)
Synthetic Line and Fair Lead: $130
Steel Tube: $110 for 20 feet, but since I used then than 2 feet you could say closer to $11 as I intend to use the rest for other projects anyway.
So total spent: $650 (or $551 depending how you want to calculate the steel cost).
Not a terrible price for a 12,000 pound winch and mount. Of course this doesn’t count the man hours spend fabricating all of this. I am very happy with it so far. However, there is one rather glaring issue I didn’t count on, the winch’s clutch lever is behind the cladding. I may be able to squeeze my hand through the opening, but I would like easier access. This also why I didn’t put “wings” on the winch plate to go over the wheels the way the crash bumper did. I havn’t decided yet if I am just going to buy a sheet of plate steel and build this out to a full bumper. It is likely that I will. I had so much fun building this winch mount that I was actually sad when it was time to put the welder away.
Anyway, that was how I spent the last two days.
I hope everyone has a happy new year!
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