So after a few months out in the field I was finally able to fly home late Monday night. Yesterday I started to work on War Wag again. She has developed a small engine oil leak and a transmission leak. I checked the tranny and she was a bit overfilled from Oil Can Henry's. The engine oil level was fine. So I crawled up underneith her (I really like the 4" lift) and start checking for loose bolts. I quickley located two loose oil pan bolts and one tranny pan bolt. 1/4" ratchet and extensions ect later and all is back to normal. I then started on removing my Nevada plates and bolting on my single rear Arizona plate. The rear plate is mounted on the drivers side rear half of the bumper. I used some Lite N Blots to provide the illumination of the rear plate at night. With that done I started on my front winch mount. I had planned to use either my Military Warn 15,000 winch, Military Warn 6,000 winch or a civy 9,000 Warn winch I had on my Snow Cat. I chose the Civy version as it would be the simplest. After cutting out the center cross bars on my brush guard I placed the Warn in the spot for a better idea of how she would look. I had done this before but I wasnt happy with how it looked reccessed. It blocks to much airflow and it just didnt look right. I will post some pics later. Then I realized that I didnt need a front plate! HMMMmmmm Ok some manual manipulation of the winch behind the front bumper. After playing with all of the winches I realized I could lay the Warn 9,000 lbs winch on her back and get her to fit with no visible sign of the winch. The roller fairlead will bolt up to where the front license plate use to be. I plan to run a synthetic cable anyway so I dont have to worry about kinking a wire rope as I wont beable to feed her on properly. This also happen even when you have access to the spool. When your winching you end up not always getting the wire rope to lay the way you want it to. Thats just a fact no matter how careful you are. So synthetic rope it will be. This also reduces weight. My front springs are the heavier load springs for just this purpose. To mount a winch up front.
With the front winch design out of the way I wanted to see if I could mount my big 15,000 Military Warn winch off the back in the same type of configuration. This will allow me to get out of an area when forward progress is not a viable option any longer. Since this truck is my personal expedition rig and I will most likely be on my own I wanted that option. It looks like I can have both winches. Stay tuned for pics as I progress with this next phase in the build.
