How much of a hassle is it to put a plow on my rancher? Swisher looks like it has some sort of a quick release mechanism, also I don't want to install a winch, just the manual lift. Any suggestions, mods or ideas greatly apreciated.

 

Its easy to install a plow. I have a whinch so I conect it to my winch to raise it up and down, but with the warn plow. It conects to the bike with 2 screws and thats it. I run my warn plow on my wolverine so a rancher might be different.

 

It's not a hassle. Mount the base plate to the frame under your ATV, the blade mounts via two clevis pins. I have the Warn winch so I pin the winch cable to the pick-up point behind the blade, and I'm done. I've never seen a manual lift so I don't know anything about them. Some people take the base plate off during the off-season, but I leave mine on year around. I've also occasionally found off-season uses for my blade, such as livestock pins, loose dirt, sand, etc.

 

RancheRider Has got it, easy make that very easy. Hint turn off gas and pick up front to stand ATV up easier to work on (for mounting plate) then it's gust two pins to release the blade push barsand two pins to put it back on SWEET.As for the manual lift it's a little harder to put together but still easy. I did not like the manual lift so I use a winch and the winch comes in handy for a lot more other thangs LIKE MUDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Flipping my Rancher onto its back rack sounds scary to me, though I know other people do this with their bikes. I'm thinking of buying a Moose plow myself and would like to mount the mounting bracket through the existing skid plate somehow, so having the bike upright would be the easiest way to see what I was doing. Can you explain exactly how you pick such a heavy thing up to rest backwards on its rack without damaging the bike or yourself?

 

what i did was put the back brake on and just push up and it should go back, and if gas is rushing out of an overflow tube just grape a pencil and stick it in like i did.... or i think you could shut the fuel off too lol

also you could flip it on it's side

tom ford

 

I wouldn't tip it on it's side!!! To stand it up lock your back brakes, put a big rock or something behind rear tire for safety, turn off the gas if you have a full tank of gas plug the vent tube.If your very strong you might be able to pick up the front I like to say I'm some what strong and I can not pick it up by myself so get a friend. Then its simple bolt on the plate then gently pull down the ATV about halfway and let it drop. On the actual plow here's another tip for the tension springs use vicegrips to pull them in place(don't get scared this is done on the ground not the ATV) Ya when I bought my plow the dealer told me it was very hard to put it together and install on the ATV so I was waiting to get $100 so they could install it then I seen an episode of ATV television and they put one on a Rubicon. IT looked very easy so I tried it was on a scale of 1 to 10 it would be a 1. Hope this helps

 

Thanks, folks. Very helpful info that makes sense.

One more thing. I bought my '04 Rancher used. It came with full aluminum skid pates already on it. They're bolted on with allen bolts that I can't seem to budge with my cheap allen key set. Should I try penetrating oil or hit them with some heat to remove the bolts and free up the frame for the plow mount? I'd rather not use heat as I worry about possibly melting the aluminum. But what do you people think? Perhaps I should just get some allen sockets for my socket set and give the bolts more torque to free them?

 

stick a small pipe or something over your wrench to make the handle longer. it will give you more leverage. use heat as a last resort.

 

hmm i donno but my skidplates all the heads of the bolts were smashes so bas that i had to cut em all off and put flush ones on... i forget why i had to get it off



tom ford