Hey Guys.
This summer project I worked on getting a winch mounted to my truck. After too much research and lurking around this forum I went with the Warn Zeon 8.
In this post I want to show you guys how I went about custom fabing a winch mount for my winch. I had some serious help from my welding mechanic who did a great job creating this with me. Unfortunately my phone deleted all of the before and during the project photos so I cant get too deeply in depth of the process, nevertheless I will try my best. This is more or less a summary of the project.
I got a Warn Zeon 8:
https://www.warn.com/truck/winches/ZEON_8.shtml
For my 2001 Ford Ranger V6 3.0
We essentially followed the design of the winch mount plate that you can find within the manual and went with that as a template. Ill show you the after pictures to help illustrate my process. (You'll have to excuse my lack of techy terms)
Here you can see that we welded a tube bar across the top of the tow hooks so that we could raise level of where the winch sat as well as the actual winch plate having something more to hold onto.
We welded the actual mount to the tube bar and the made a right angle to raise the winch about an inch. Then welded a separate piece to the mount for the fairlead to bolt onto. We also welded those side tabs (2 total) for added stability.
Front view of the mount. You can see the two side tabs, as well as where the winch bolts onto in 4 locations.
Overall view of it, I also had more or less a metal bumper skirt added to hide some of the otherwise aesthetically negative components of the truck. After I removed my original bumper cover my truck was more or less naked in the front! But my wheel well space was considerably increased.
After everything was complete I did not have as much of a smooth time painting the actual mount and side skirts, long story short I had it welded on the day it was fabricated and could not paint it for a week so there was considerable surface rust to the bare metal(poor mans sandblasting on the bright side..). I had to sand paper everything down, treat it for the rust, prime and paint it, and you can still see bumpy circles around parts of the painted bumper. Any ideas why? I might re-do them after this winter, fortunately the bumper skirt is bolted on so their easy to take off. The actual mount came out fine.
If any of you guys are interested in my method and have any questions on anything don't hesitate to ask! I will be more then happy to get more technical on certain parts. I can also ask my weld mechanic his calculations and why he did what he did. I plan on doing a before and after thread, if any of you guys want me to do a thread on a more specific part I will be more then glad to do so.
Is this a safe and reliable set-up? Do you guys see any improvements that could have been done and have you seen anything similar to this?