ARB bull bar & winch on a 7.3L Super Duty that's old enough to buy beer

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janders

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Enthusiast III

473
Seattle, WA, USA
First Name
Jason
Last Name
Andersen
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.

 

janders

Rank II

Enthusiast III

473
Seattle, WA, USA
First Name
Jason
Last Name
Andersen
It makes me sad that ARB no longer produces the bullbar for the newer Superduty. This would be my choice hands down.
Huh. I didn't know that. That sucks. I'm still surprised more people don't run full size rigs in the backcountry. Every one runs Tacos and then loads them up like they're Super Duties.

Frankly, I was pretty surprised to find they still made it for the first gen. Super Duties like mine. It's a pain in the ass finding parts for this ol' truck.
 

TrippinStfflr

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Rock Island, TN, USA
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It makes me sad that ARB no longer produces the bullbar for the newer Superduty. This would be my choice hands down.
Huh. I didn't know that. That sucks. I'm still surprised more people don't run full size rigs in the backcountry. Every one runs Tacos and then loads them up like they're Super Duties.

Frankly, I was pretty surprised to find they still made it for the first gen. Super Duties like mine. It's a pain in the ass finding parts for this ol' truck.
This guy has a pretty cool Tremor. I've got the sane Diamondback bed cover but I dont think I'll be doing the same set up that he has.

 

Desert Runner

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Your truck looks great! I think the ARB bumpers look best on the older trucks with more squared-off bodies like your F-250.
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I also think that ARB makes one of the better looking and functional Bull-Bars. Competitors like Ranch Hand while very functional, are ugly. Road Armour while very HD, also looks that way, so it was a no go. The ARB I got looks like the same series shown in the above post. I would have liked the OEM fog pockets for my bumper, but instead put auxiliary Hella 500 amber units above the winch. These driving lights have the 50 watt rating, so the OEM switch and fuse work for now. I had my control box installed above but tucked under the bumper wing. I also ran a on/off power toggle switch to keep power out of the system, except when I wanted it. I got the 17.5K Smittybilt winch which fit barely.OBLogo-Gold_Outlined_100x.pngWanted overkill extraction ability, as my truck is over 8000 lbs .

On a job traveling in Michigan a few years back, , I was seeing road kill every 1/4 mile or so, and about every mile in parts of NY State in farmland country, along with similar, in parts of Pennsylvania. I decided then and now to purchase a Bull-Bar when I got home. I have never hit a deer or other animal, but have come close a few times. It just seemed to be prudent when out in the middle of no where, at hwy speeds.

PS: In the driveway picture you can just see the shine from the electrical 'power' toggle which energizes the winch (trucks right bumper wing), and helps in case of a electrical short or malfunction to the controller box.
 

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Hank10

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Lake County, Indiana, United States
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Henry
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I’ve had a few mildly built 7.3 over the year, I always built my own bumpers. I recently acquired a 6.7 cclb cause my 96 f350 blew tranny while in South Dakota. I live south of Chicago, so not too many after market setups around here. Mainly the heavy ranch hand bumpers. I plan to build this rig to haul my 5th wheel around the county, and do over nighters away from “base camp”. I’m traveling with wife and 3 kiddos under 5.
 

janders

Rank II

Enthusiast III

473
Seattle, WA, USA
First Name
Jason
Last Name
Andersen
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PS: In the driveway picture you can just see the shine from the electrical 'power' toggle which energizes the winch (trucks right bumper wing), and helps in case of a electrical short or malfunction to the controller box.
Smart. I have a battery switch I'm intending to put inline to the winch on the positive leg. I'm not crazy about hot 2AWG wire running across the front of my truck and from what I've read, breakers don't do well on winches.