Loading ATV's on Pickup using a winch
 

:o Hi all, small rerun of a previous thread but was hoping to get a little more advice on loading of my ATV up on to my pick up using a winch. Does anyone out there have any experience in this? Fellow member fballfan showed me a link from Youtube where a guy was loading up his quad onto a "monster Truck" but that fellow had a winch mounted on the truck bed. If I were to hook my quad winch hook onto the top center of the bed of my truck the angle of the cable to where the quad is located at the bottom of the ramps would make the cable run over the edge of the ramp and tail gate. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

I'd just protect the portion of the tailgate where the cable would rub. Perhaps just use are narrow piece of sheet aluminum that you can put in place and lays across the tailgate when it's down. Bend the long ends 90 degrees so that it hooks over the the tailgate (the top and bottom edges of the tailgate) to that it stays in place when the winch cable rubs across it. Put some cap tape on the inner surface if you want to prevent the aluminum from scratching the paint on the tailgate. More than one way to skin a cat... This is just my first thought off the top of my head.

If you made it from wood or metal, (maybe angle iron and plywood) you could mount a small pulley on the end (top edge of tail gate side) to run the cable across and remove all the friction. You may need to experiment a little with keeping the backside down onto the tailgate. Perhaps a strap from the backside of this contraption that extends down between the tailgate and box to the hitch.

Just my $.02. Hope this give helps give you some ideas.

Be careful about putting that much force on the back of the bed of your truck. I've bent one before doing something else, and bent it back by just putting a little weight on it.

Not sure what would be a good way to reinforce that, but it's something I'd look into of I was going to do that.

If your talking about the connection point for the winch cable on the front of the box wall, I totally agree. If was doing it on my truck, I'd use the tie downs that are attached to the floor of the front corners of the box to bear the load. Something as simple as a heavy duty stranded cable (wire rope) with carabiners on either end to span between the two tie downs would likely work. Just clip the winch hook at the mid point of the cable.

Again, just food for thought...

Yep, the back wall.