I already have a trailer hitch receiver on the back, and it's a good place to mount an electric winch. It's certainly a good place to grab on to the truck if I need to pull it backwards out of something I couldn't drive out of. I thought it would be a good idea to have a similar device on the front of the truck.
The front hitch receiver is made by WARN, and it mounts to the front forks of the frame, in the same holes as the tow hooks. It consists of a square steel tube welded to a cross piece, which has mounting brackets welded to each end of it. It came with bolts, washers, lock washers, and nut plates.
Installing the mount was a little work. I had to take off the front license plate and the air dam. Since the receiver uses the same mounting holes as do the tow hooks, I had to take them out, as well. The bolts that came with the receiver were slightly larger than the ones that held the tow hooks in place, and they wouldn't fit through the mounting holes in the hooks. I had to ream the holes in the hooks out slightly to permit them to be remounted.
I had more trouble with the front skid plate. It's not really a skid plate, since it's plastic, but it keeps the small stuff from perforating the pan. It's better to have it there than to not have it, but the front end of it mounts against the frame right where the cross member of the receiver sits. I had to remove it, trim the corners of it so it would fit between the frame forks, and drill new mounting holes for it. You can bet this piece doesn't get much cleaning and polishing, so it was pretty nasty when I took it off. I cleaned it up with dish washing detergent and water before I did much work on it. The plastic is pretty thick and tough, so I used aviation shears ("tin snips" to those of you old enough) to trim it to fit.
I had to cut a hole in the air dam to let the receiver poke through. The dam is fairly soft, flexible plastic, and a sharp utility knife did the job just fine. The hole isn't real pretty, but it's usually hidden. More on that later.
With the skid plate, license plate, air dam, and tow hooks out of the truck, the actual mounting of the receiver wasn't any big deal. As I mentioned, I had to ream the mounting holes in the tow hooks so the larger bolts for the receiver would go through them. Naturally, the bolts that came with the receiver weren't long enough to go through everything, so I had to buy longer ones. I made sure they were hard enough. No shear bolts needed here! Once I had all the hardware in one place, it was a little awkward holding a 40 pound hitch receiver against the frame with one hand while trying to align a bolt that had the lock washer, flat washer, and tow hook with the nut plate. The second one was a lot easier.
With the four bolts tightened to WARN's specification,
all I had to do was put the truck back together. I located mounting
holes for the front of the skid plate and drilled them. The screws
that hold that in are self-tapping hex head machine screws, so a ratchet
drive worked well for that. The air dam was a "cut and try" operation,
since there was no template, but after about an hour I had the hole in it
and got it bolted back to the bumper.
Then I mounted the license plate. Hmmm. The receiver stuck out about one inch farther than the license plate was originally mounted, so it pushed the bottom of the plate forward about that much. That isn't anything to worry about, but the license plate covered about half of the receiver.
My first thoughts were that it was a little ugly. If everything hadn't been black it would have been a big ugly, because, as I mentioned, the hole in the air dam wasn't all that clean, either. My second thought is that if I ever needed to use the receiver, I would have to take off the license plate, and that would require more tools. I think you can tell that I'm not afraid to use tools, but if I wanted something done quickly, this would be a delay. I figured if I could get a license plate mount that fit inside the receiver that I could just pull the pin and I'd have the receiver available.
I went to Dependable Off Road in Orange, CA to see
if they could fabricate up such an item. They said they could order
one for a lot less, and that always sounds good. It took about a month
for it to show up. When it did, I stuck everything together, and found
that the license plate was about four inches in front of the bumper. A
little drilling and hack sawing made a new hole in the license plate holder
tongue, and my hitch receiver looks pretty good, since you can't see it!
Well, the hole in the air dam is still pretty ugly. If I had it to do again, I'd be more careful and I'd finish off the edges of the hole. Another thing that's a little worrisome is the fact that I can't use the bumper to push anything. The license plate is still leading the way by about an inch, and if I just remove it, the receiver tube will be what is doing the pushing. I will eventually make up a push bar for the receiver, but it's not high on my list.
One other small issue is the fact that the original license plate mounting holes are still in the bumper. I'm planning on getting some chromed button head bolts to put in them, but it hasn't happened yet. Maybe now that I'm telling the world that the project isn't really done, I'll get around to it.
Finally, the bottom edge of the license plate is now the lowest part of the front of the car, which decreased my ground clearance by a couple of inches. It's not below the air dam, but if I run up against a steep gradient, I'll bend the plate and bust its frame. I'd like to get a new holder with the tongue all the way at the bottom edge.
to Barfle's Home Page