4th gen Explorer front winch install tutorial / Front trailer hitch receiver. | Ford Explorer Forums - Serious Explorations

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4th gen Explorer front winch install tutorial / Front trailer hitch receiver.

Dylan Baker

Member
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October 2, 2019
Messages
13
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City, State
Seattle
Year, Model & Trim Level
06 Exp
86 F150
68 Stang
Ok, so I installed a front winch on my explorer recently, (see second picture) and since I had not really seen anyone describe how to do this besides custom fabricated bumpers, so I decided to show yall how I did it. Also for this you will have modify the plastic of the bumper. Here we go

Things you will need:
(you can get all of this at harbor freight for cheap if you want, I included a link to each of these at harbor freight, just so you can click on it and see a picture for reference.

> An 18 section of two inch hit receiver
https://www.harborfreight.com/class-iii-18-in-x-2-in- standard-receiver-tube-69815.html

> A 500 pound 2 inch hitch step receiver
5000 lb. Step Bumper Receiver

> A hitch receiver mount for winches
Hitch Receiver Mount for Winches

> A winch obviously

> some pieces of flat iron

> various long bolts, washers, lock washers, etc., size of them will depend on the winch mount and receiver you get.

NOTE: I am not responsible if you mess something up
NOTE 2: I have a bull bar on my rig, but it is not necessary for this project.


STEP 1: Remove the front bumper. to do this you will need to remove a series of plastic clip like things on the top in front of the radiator, then you need to remove the headlights as well as two smaller bolts from the underside of the bumper.

STEP 2. You will need to take off the curved piece of metal that is the actual bumper.

STEP 3: Take the 18 inch piece of two inch receiver and cut one of the ends off. You need to cut the end off that the trailer hitch would attach to so that you have a long chunk of two inch square tube. make sure to cut tube behind the hole where the pin would go to secure the trailer hitch.

STEP 4:
Take the hitch step receiver mount and place it on top of the piece of square tube. Essentially they will be stacked on top of each other so that the square tube acts as a spacer to elevate the hitch step receiver mount.

STEP 5: mark where the bolt holes in the hitch step receiver mount line up with piece of square tube. Then drill on these marks all the way through the square tube. Pick a drill bit that is the same size as the bolt holes in the hitch step receiver.

STEP 6. Remove the curved metal piece that is attached to the front of the car. it is shown in first picture. Find the center of it and find the center of the piece of square tube. Line them up and then mark the curved metal piece through the holes you just made. Then drill through the holes all the way through both sides of the curved metal piece.

STEP 7. Now you will need to take some very large bolts and put the whole thing together. You will essentially have the piece of square tube sandwiched between curved metal piece and the hitch step receiver mount. The bolts you picked will go through all three pieces.

STEP 8. Now put the curved piece of metal back on the car. It will slide on and you can bolt it back in temporarily.

STEP 9. If you look at the top
ford_Explorer_2_1.jpg
View attachment 178834
 



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Your rig looks pretty bad ass. I love the brush guard you have there. Where'd you get it?
 






Your rig looks pretty bad ass. I love the brush guard you have there. Where'd you get it?
I don't remember exactly what brand the brush guard is, but it is the cheapest one I could find. I got it off of ebay
 






It seems like the original post cuts off before the end, is it supposed to stop at step 9? I'm not really sure how everything is supposed to line up, and if any cutting is required(I don't see how the winch can mount there without cutting a hole in the grill or bumper)
 






It seems like the original post cuts off before the end, is it supposed to stop at step 9? I'm not really sure how everything is supposed to line up, and if any cutting is required(I don't see how the winch can mount there without cutting a hole in the grill or bumper)
Yeah not sure why it cut off at step 9. There is a little cutting in the grill required but not much needs to be cut. On my 06 limited I just needed to cut a small piece out of the single rip that goes across the lower grill (the little slot that is around 3 inches big and sits below the main grill. There is plastic cross piece going across this slot). The hitch receiver is just the right size to fit through this slot once the cross piece is removed, and the receiver is pretty much flush with the edge of the bumper. If people are interested I can do a video of it at some point or at least post a complete write up.
 






Have you ever used the winch with this mount? I was looking at my ex today with a mechanic friend and we were a little skeptical of the ability of the metal bumper to withstand the force of the winch pulling a heavy vehicle, especially if it is really stuck. The metal is thinner than I expected. We were thinking of ways to reinforce it, but I may just replace it altogether with some 2x6 square tube bracketed to the frame rails
 






Have you ever used the winch with this mount? I was looking at my ex today with a mechanic friend and we were a little skeptical of the ability of the metal bumper to withstand the force of the winch pulling a heavy vehicle, especially if it is really stuck. The metal is thinner than I expected. We were thinking of ways to reinforce it, but I may just replace it altogether with some 2x6 square tube bracketed to the frame rails

Yes, I was also a little dubious of the strength of the attachment points myself, so I did re enforce it a little bit.

My experience before re-enforcing it:
I used the winch 4 or 5 times before I re-enforced it, and it worked fine. As I pulled the winch did flex a bit, and the plastic bumper flexed as a result, but most of that flex came from the winch plate in the front hitch receiver. Given I was not super stuck in these situations, although one of the times I was pulling the whole weight of the car out of a hole on a mellow hill, and I even flipped over a rolled car using just the winch with my explorer stationary, so it really did hold up to some decently tough pulls.

What I did to re-enforce it:
I took some square stock and tacked it inside the C channel of the metal bumper to strengthen things up a little bit. I also put some bracing from the top of the hitch receiver tube to a cross bar that went across the car under the radiator parallel to the bumper. I also put some braces from the back of this cross bar back down to the metal bumper, and I put some brackets in to better hold the bumper to the frame rails.

My experience after I re-enforced it
I have used the winch quite a few times since I re-enforced it, and have had nothing but luck with it. It was much more solid and had much less flex after I re-enforced it, and I have really pushed the winch to limit. I have pulled some trees with it, I uprooted a 16 inch diameter stump with it, and I have winched up a 40 degree hill with it. The hardest test was definitely when I got stuck trying to pull a boat out of the water on a mostly flat beach, and I had to back the car all the way into the water. The car was about 20 feet from the shoreline, but only in about a foot deep of water because I had the car perched on a sand bar so that the trailer hung off into deeper water so that we could put the boat on it. Anyways, trying to pull a 5,000+ lb boat out of the water with the car sitting on an underwater sand bar was not a good idea. The tires dug in the soft sand and pretty soon it had dug holes in the sand bar deep enough that the frame of the car was sitting on the sand bar. We got a chevy 2500 parked on dry land on the beach and I winched using a double line pull to it, and at first it just pulled the chevy towards me. After we got the chevy attached to a tree via a series of tow straps, we were able to winch the car out of with the trailer and boat still attached. Needless to say, I was extremely stuck in that situation, and the winch was able to get the car unstuck while pulling the boat and trailer. Nothing broke on the winch or the winch mount and it was still as solid as ever. Doing some math the car weighed approximately 5,000 pounds with all the gear and racks and brush guards I had on it, and the trailer and boat weighed in the ballpark of 5,000 maybe a little more with gas and water in the boat.
So, IN CONCLUSION, the winch pulled at least 10,000 pounds plus the car being dug to the frame rails, and the winch and the mounts didn't break. So as far as I am concerned, it works fine for my needs with the set up I have, but one could definitely go and make it stronger if they so desired. I really didn't (and still don't think) that it looks like it is strong enough, but my experience has convinced me otherwise. I think some more bracing would help with the flex when you are pulling super heavy loads with it, and I will likely go back and strengthen it up a bit the next time I have the bumper off, because overkill is better than having it fail on you.

Your idea of replacing the metal c channel bumper with something stronger is a good idea, but I think that the majority of the stress comes from having the pulling point of the winch a solid 4 ish inches above the bumper where it is bolted to the car. I think that either replacing the bumper with something stronger or re-enforcing it like I did is a good way to go, because it helps keep the bumper from flexing as badly when the torque of the winch is applied to it. I think that also bracing the hitch receiver to a cross member or to the frame rails farther back also really helps, because it prevents the winch from flexing forward and down with the bumper as it is pulling. Another way to go would to be to figure out a way to mount the hitch receiver farther down and closer to the metal bumper, but you would really have to cut up your plastic bumper to make that work, and the winch position would be a lot lower to the ground which would could create some bad angles in the cable if you are trying to winch up a hill by attaching it to something at the top of the hill, and it would reduce your approach angle a little bit to have it mounted that low.

Unrelated, a much discovered benefit of having the winch mounted on a plate that slides into a hitch receiver that I discovered is that you can disconnect the cables and put the winch on the back by sliding the winch plate into your rear trailer hitch. I had to do this the other day in a really dicey situation where I had to stop halfway down a super steep hill with zero traction because the road had turns in it and was completely mud, and I was basically just going to slide down the whole thing and off the edge down a ravine. Ended up disconnecting all the cables, putting the winch on the back, hooking up power to it with some jumper cables and just winching my way back up the hill in reverse. I am probably going to run power back the rear hitch and install some sockets in the cables so that I can disconnect them to make it easier in the future, but this is something you can do if you are really in a pinch and you have jumper cables.
 






Been really busy with work but I finally have everything together(no reinforcement yet though, that's coming).

The way I did it was welding a 2" hitch receiver to a steel plate, then drilling holes in the plate and the top of the bumper and bolting them together. I had to do some cutting into the plastic bumper cover under the lower grille. I also made my own hitch mount for the winch by welding a solid 2 inch square piece to a steel plate, welding a small steel plate upright for the fair lead, then drilling holes for everything. Still figuring out some QD wiring because I dont want the 100+ lb assembly hanging on the flimsy bumper until I reinforce it.

I'll upload some progress pics later
20201107_190230.jpg
 






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