What if you want to add a winch to the front of your heavy duty truck, but you do not want to modify or change your factory bumper and lights? Here is a relatively straight forward solution that can be used on a new Ford F250 Super Duty, or many other HD trucks.
The images and the installation description you see here were submitted by a TFLtruck viewer, Jeremiah S. He added this WARN VR 12,000 lbs winch to his new 2019 F-250 Power Stroke diesel. (Note: this is not a sponsored post. We just wanted to share this, and see what you think.)
Before we go on, we will acknowledge that a Ram Power Wagon comes from the factory with a WARN winch. However, the Power Wagon is not offered with a turbo-diesel engine. If you want a diesel-powered pickup truck with a winch, you have to turn to the aftermarket for a solution.
This installation uses a Westin Max Winch tray. The tray uses factory front tow hook bolt locations as a mountain point. You lose the front tow hooks, but you gain a winch mounting plate that (Westin says) is rated up to 16,500 lbs of maximum “straight line pull”.
Jeremiah says, the entire mounting tray and winch installation took him 1-2 hours.
The cost of the tray is around $400 (depending on the distributor). The cost of this WARN winch is around $750 (once again, depending).
There is another way to mount a winch to a front of a truck. You can install a front 2-inch hitch receiver, get a hitch mounted winch tray, and put a winch on it. This solution offers flexibility of easily removing the winch when not needed. The front-mounted hitch receiver can be used for other accessories, such as a snow plow or a cargo tray.
The downside of a front hitch receiver is the additional cost, and the potential need to cut the front bumper (depending on your truck). The downside of a tow-hook mounted solution is that you are also partially or totally blocking the lower bumper air inlet. If you plan on towing heavy with your diesel truck, such as this 6.7L Power Stroke V8 – then you need to consider this and make sure the intercooler and the radiators are getting enough air flow.
Here is a first look at the 2020 Ford Super Duty lineup.
