Have torch, will travel Mike...

 

One of these days I need to get a torch. Though, I could use a plasma cutter, arc/stick welder, MIG welder, TIG welder (I'd love to have a TIG...), full size Mill and Lathe (not the small combo garage ones), a nice big band saw, and a floor mounted drill press. I could make just about anything with all that. Then again.. I'd need 3 phase to do it and I'm not much of a fan of phase converters.

Though, one of my buddys was saying you can get a 2 axis table for a drill press and use it for light milling work. That may be an idea. One of these days...

I got another winch - a Terra 45SR. These work the same way as their trailer series - dynamic brake and permanent magnet motor, just not enclosed (has a remote solinoid, that might be a chore to work around but I'll come up with something) and less expensive. When you let off the button it stops dead and keeps loads from rolling. Since the Talon won't work for the garage stuff (does not stop dead when you let off the button under no/light loads) this Terra will work great there - plus for portable work I'd rather move a ~40lb winch and leave the big one for the truck.

 

You can use your torch to cut out all the rust body panels and then bring a welder to weld in new ones.

 

I have seen your truck Mike.....


As many farms and places you visit Steve, ****** up any 5 or 10HP 3 Phase motor if you can that someone is getting rid of.

 

My fabricator is working on a mock up this week. If I can break away Ill head over and we'll yank the bumper to do some test fitting. The mock-up is just to confirm dimensions and fit, the base is a spare hitch he has there. That will give us a great working base for the full fab.

Ill get some pictures as we go.

I got some rope to make extensions with also. With everything tied together I'll be able to get 310ft or a hair bit more, and that is leaving 10ft of winch line on the drum (90ft line, 80ft or so useable). That should more than cover my bases. 100, 50, 2x 25ft for extensions, 1x10ft, 2x 5ft runs for length adjustment (angled anchors, etc), and instead of d shackles I am making a few rope shackles (with d's for the metal attachments - blocks, other sharp connections).

 

This project has been moving a lot slower than I had hoped for. I got the truck over to the shop today and we pulled the bumper off and laid the mock-up receiver in place. I didn't get a whole lot of pictures, we were working fast and I was dodging phone calls.

What we determined is instead of trying to fabricate up a square tube with the modifications it would be a heck of a lot easier to run a solid 5/8" thick bar/plate across between the tow hook mounts and make the recesses for the tubes.

The trick to it is going to be to attach the receiver tube. It may actually be easier with a flat bar rather than going through the center of the square cross bar anyway.

 

Curious of what came of this project? I'm debating the same thing. Is that winch the 18,000lb winch?

I want a high capacity winch but no removable mount will handle anything above 12k (from what I've searched) and most front receivers are only good to 9k. Just need to make sure to not put more than that on the front I guess. Also not sure if any of those mounts will actually hold a winch that big as those are much larger in size. Wonder how much my rear Titan hitch could handle?

 

Thanks for bringing the thread back to life. The project is still around, but hasn't materialized yet. I was working with a fabricator last winter but the short of it was we had differing opinions. I wasn't willing to take any short cuts and compromise. Once the winter passed it wasn't a high priority - I started building up a boat instead with a console and canopy so that is where my time and effort went.

I have another route to take the idea as of late, I haven't sat down with the guy to go over ideas but it looks promising. The winch has been collecting dust.

Yea, it is the 18k, not the 14k.

 

Good to hear. 18k is a beast of a winch. I picked up a good old Harbor Freight 12k that I intend to use for everything besides direct vehicle recovery. It's rated well for what it is. I went the cheaper route because if I don't use it I'm only out a few bucks. They have an 18k also but that's just out of a range I want to spend. If it becomes something I use more frequently then an upgrade would be in order when and if it goes caput.

I was curious on your front mount because all the front receivers are only good for around 9k. I'd be more than happy to use my rear hitch as it's quite stout (Reese Titan). Just gotta run a lot of heavy gauge wire to the rear..... But having the front as an option would be nice. I'm not into a permanent type mount.

 

In regards to heavy gauge wire - welding cable is good to use as it is flexible, for the most part. I have 2/0 and use the large 350a rated Powerpoles.

Something else of note with the welding cable and it's flexing is it is due to the loose strands inside the jacket. The copper is twisted, as nearly all stranded wire is, and those strands are not bound real tight in the jacket. The jacket in and of itself is "soft". What happens when the cable flexes is the strands torsion tighter or unwind. If you hold the cable with a tight grip and bend it you'll feel exactly what I am describing. Why I bring this up is I thought I would layer the front cable run with duct tape to keep the +/- runs together and add some extra abrasion resistance. When I did that it locked the cables together and prevented them from twisting = very stiff compared to what it was before.

Cable:

Connectors:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Anderson-SB350-Connector-Kit-Blue-2-0-Awg-6321G1-2-0-Ga-/270412562710?hash=item3ef5d84116
The Anderson Powerpoles are keyed per color. You can't connect a red to a blue connector, for example.

If you don't have access to a crimp tool for the pins you can solder them as well. I would highly recommend sealing the pins and cables. I use adhesive lined 3m heat shrink. For soldering I put the pin in a vice and heat with a torch. Then I fill the pin about half way with solder. Then I put the stripped wire in slowly with heat applied. A bit of flux added to the end of the wire may help, but you also don't want the solder wicking much up the cable because it will bond the strands together making it a "solid" wire. For an environment that is not flexed much it won't be much of an issue, but lots of flexing can lead to breakage of the wire/pin.

I see a lot of Powerpoles on bumpers and no one bothers to seal them up. From my radio background I am a stickler for sealing up connectors. Powerpoles are not as finicky as coaxial cables and connectors with RF, but clean connectors/contacts, and non-corroded cables, just work better.

 

Thanks for the information! Hopefully I can make some progress this winter with the truck in the garage.

Since I'm not as knowledgeable as you with this electrical stuff let me ask you this, if you have an answer.

If I wanted to be able to use the winch in the front and rear receiver what kind of battery connection would be make. This would be a lot of cable running to the battery. Do they make double breakers to run the wires to the front and back? Maybe getting the front hitch would be better first.

Any help with this is appreciated.

Thanks!

 

Yeah, the hitch first would be a good route. As to your question -

I would use fuses and carry spares. I don't know of any automotive "circuit breaker" that will take the amperage.

The wiring hasn't been completed yet on my rig, but these are the fuses I have, 500a:
32V MEGA Fuses - Automotive Bolt-Down Fuses - Littelfuse

Check the site for their catalog. They have a fuse block holder for those as well. For connections between the fuse block and cables - ring terminals with matching wire gauge capacity and a hole diameter for the bolt on the block is what you want. Don't use terminals that have too big of a hole and try clamping it between washers.

I will need to look at the batteries again and the configuration of the terminals and factory wiring again to see what will work.

What ever route you pick, fuse the positive side for sure. You can run one fuse block and tie both the front and rear leads off of that, or you can run a separate fuse block for each run. I am running 2 blocks. This way I always have a spare fuse if one blows (just unbolt and swap).

Just a side note on your above comment - if your winch is anything like my Talon it won't be very good for other-than vehicle recovery work. If you read through the thread you may catch my comment about the Terra 45 I picked up. This winch is fantastic for utility work. I have used it a lot and have been happy with it, aside from the mount (which I need to fabricate that also - lots of projects, not much time). I haven't had any scenarios where power was an issue with it.

The biggest issue I have had is cutting the speed back with blocks. My winch gear includes 3x 36k blocks and one 11k, all the superwinch ones. I have to put all 4 together to get the speed close to where I want it for the lift I use to get my cap on and off the truck. What I need to do is get more of the 11k's because they are smaller. The 1/4" line on the Terra doesn't work too well on the big blocks once it jumps off the sheaves...

 

Thanks for the info, again!

I'm also not against picking up a small winch for utility purposes. That would probably mount better in my dump trailer for pulling up stumps or large rocks.

I watched an hour long video, on YouTube, of a guy talking about the HF 12k winch. He did a complete tear down of the gears which was quite interesting should any future problems arise.

He also showed it taking down and pulling out what looked to be about a 6" diameter tree! He was also pulling out fence posts with the entire concrete plug attached. That's the work I'm talking about.

 

Update:

All,

I am resurrecting this old thread. Long story short, life got in the way of the project and it has been collecting dust. The main hold-up at the time was I didn't have the fabrication ability - I needed a heavier duty welder and I wasn't able to get in touch with someone that had the equipment where I could do it there. Between that and a lot of stuff going on in my world around then the project got sidelined. I was also using the smaller winch I got (Terra 45 SR) at the time for everything I needed a winch for, so I wasn't in need of the big one. I have since put the small winch on a more proper mount (one of the projects last summer, '20), but it got a ton of use with the hob-knobbed mount I had for the previous 5-6 years.

I ended up doing another, much larger, fab project a couple years ago - a sectional extendable trailer dolly (basically a 2nd trailer to extend the reach of launching boats in to shallow launches). See thread link below. In the process - I burned up the flux core welder I have (surpassed the duty cycle and melted a primary lead, not the winding on the transformer but the leads from the power cord to the transformer, and it caused a light short to the ground clamp = hot ground and was "shocking" to use afterwards). Since I didn't have anything to weld with (though, the flux core machine is repairable - I made new wires, haven't put all back together....) and was wanting a better machine anyways I researched machines and ended up with an oldschool Lincoln Idealarc 250 AC/DC (1966 MY, solid copper wound transformer "Round Top"). I restored it last summer - not that there was much wrong with it, I just made it look as good as it works. So now I have a suitable welder and am looking at getting back to the winch mount project here.

Trailer dolly thread:
https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...o-problem.html

Welder restoration thread:
https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...e-with-me.html
There is a link in the above thread to the full thread on the restoration over on the Welding Web forums if you want to see/read through the whole thing. Otherwise, there are a couple before/after pics in the FTE thread on post #17

__________________________________________________ _________

So on to the original project - the winch mount.

Back in '18 (I think, another thread around here somewhere) I replaced the EGR cooler core. That required working with the coolant - I needed to drop the coolant for the replacement. So I ended up doing a full coolant flush at the same time as the truck was due for it anyway. It was a good project to learn about working with the coolant system.

With that having been said - one of my design criteria for the original winch mount receiver on the front of the truck was that I DID NOT want to work with the coolant - which meant I had to work around the large coolant hose that passes through the space where the receiver frame would have to cross. That has changed. I am willing to drop the coolant and mess with the hoses. That, on the surface, should help with the fabrication as I can largely maintain the integrity of the large cross square frame member.

I have 3 ideas for attacking this:
1. Drill out the cross frame and pass the rubber hose through it, with some form of abrasion prevention - grommets, steel mesh sleeve around the hose, something...
2. Same as above, but pass the hose through another tube of some form - metal or otherwise - as the abrasion protection, and secure it to the coolant hose such that it won't allow any movement between the hose and the abrasion protection.
3. Use a long metal nipple pipe passed through the frame, weld it in place, and cut a section out of the coolant hose, then resecure to the nipples on top and below the frame.

#3 would give more potential leak points, but by having the hose secured to the frame just as it would be both ends of the coolant circuit where it lies there would be no risk of abrasion, no more than the 2 points it attaches already.

Thoughts?

I have a couple welding projects in mind for this season - this one and a trailer for bicycle touring (aluminum, I am hoping). If all goes well I'll at least have material by the end of April. I need to get another non-fab project knocked out then hammer out drawings and dimensions for the projects. That will take a little bit. Then I can order the materials.

 

Mine works great....not the fanciest...but paid for itself the first time I use it