It can be a little tricky to source info on trucks as old as mine so I thought I'd throw this out there for anyone else rocking a first generation Super Duty. I wanted a winch on the diesel pig because it seems unlikely our buddy with a TJ is gonna pull our ass out of a snowbank.
So I went about researching bumpers and found ARB still offers a bull bar for the more mature trucks. That's really where my research stopped. There are plenty of other bumpers that will fit these trucks but my impression of them was that they seemed more form over function. ARB bull bars are not pretty but hella functional. Solid all around protection, well made, and tested for air bag deployment. Also got to keep my OEM recovery points which are skookum AF.
As for the winch, I went with a Smittybilt 15k steel cable winch. Didn't want to pony up for the Warn and read on a random 3 sentence Amazon review somewhere that the Smittybilt X20 winches fit on this truck with this bumper. That was enough validation for me to drop $2,500 on parts. I felt like 12,000lbs might not be enough of a winch for a 9,000lb truck. As my commercial deck hand friends say: "nothing too strong ever broke!"
I won't go into the grisly details on installing the bumper or the winch. I'll just tell you this: I did not enjoy it. First of all, the ARB manual shows up in Australian. I found no good Australian to English translators on the web so I had to do the best I could to figure out how to fettle and what the f**k a packer plate is. Second of all, if you don't have a tractor or forklift or excavator for this install - maybe get one. Hydraulics solved some problems so my lower back didn't have to. Third, be prepared to spend an hour or two trying to threading one single bolt. I really hate product engineers.
Smittybilt assumes you are going to put the control pack directly on top of the winch. However, there was no room so I relocated on top of the bumper on the passenger side to make it a short run to the winch motor. I really wanted to put it in the engine bay but there was no good place for it.
I don't like that the winch control pack is out in the weather and getting 70MPH rain blown into it. However, I learned this trick from my days of working on sailboats. Lanocote does a really awesome job of preventing corrosion on electrical connections in wet places. I coated the terminals inside the control pack and on the winch motor.
While I had the whole front end off, I painted the grill with Plasti-dip and replaced the shite OEM headlights. Gave the whole front end a new look. Next time this truck buys beer, it might just get carded.
Gave it a quick test run for the weekend out in the Olympic peninsula.
After some satellite photo recon, found a crazy cool campsite in the Olympic National Forest with views for days.
So I went about researching bumpers and found ARB still offers a bull bar for the more mature trucks. That's really where my research stopped. There are plenty of other bumpers that will fit these trucks but my impression of them was that they seemed more form over function. ARB bull bars are not pretty but hella functional. Solid all around protection, well made, and tested for air bag deployment. Also got to keep my OEM recovery points which are skookum AF.
As for the winch, I went with a Smittybilt 15k steel cable winch. Didn't want to pony up for the Warn and read on a random 3 sentence Amazon review somewhere that the Smittybilt X20 winches fit on this truck with this bumper. That was enough validation for me to drop $2,500 on parts. I felt like 12,000lbs might not be enough of a winch for a 9,000lb truck. As my commercial deck hand friends say: "nothing too strong ever broke!"
I won't go into the grisly details on installing the bumper or the winch. I'll just tell you this: I did not enjoy it. First of all, the ARB manual shows up in Australian. I found no good Australian to English translators on the web so I had to do the best I could to figure out how to fettle and what the f**k a packer plate is. Second of all, if you don't have a tractor or forklift or excavator for this install - maybe get one. Hydraulics solved some problems so my lower back didn't have to. Third, be prepared to spend an hour or two trying to threading one single bolt. I really hate product engineers.
Smittybilt assumes you are going to put the control pack directly on top of the winch. However, there was no room so I relocated on top of the bumper on the passenger side to make it a short run to the winch motor. I really wanted to put it in the engine bay but there was no good place for it.
I don't like that the winch control pack is out in the weather and getting 70MPH rain blown into it. However, I learned this trick from my days of working on sailboats. Lanocote does a really awesome job of preventing corrosion on electrical connections in wet places. I coated the terminals inside the control pack and on the winch motor.
While I had the whole front end off, I painted the grill with Plasti-dip and replaced the shite OEM headlights. Gave the whole front end a new look. Next time this truck buys beer, it might just get carded.
Gave it a quick test run for the weekend out in the Olympic peninsula.
After some satellite photo recon, found a crazy cool campsite in the Olympic National Forest with views for days.
