Take a look under your quad to see if your mounting plate if flexing downward a little.

 

It was not bent no. I was just a very poor & distorted photo taken from a cell phone. I had the Moose mount not the G2 mount.

 

Well, this discussion has been helpful. For me, I 'll be going with a center mount solution. For the amount of plowing I need to do, it won't be too inconvenient to get one the ground for hookup. The clincher for me is the potentially reduced ground clearance from a front mount. I can easily see myself plowing without incident then bending the front mount when I'm out trail riding.....Tusk setup here i come!

Malt King

 

I've said this before....I have a Moose setup, mid-mount. Bent the plow in half when it caught on an impacted frozen stick and flipped over...the right corner then caught on the frozen earth and folded the right side. I've since pounded it back into relative shape. It happened in a flash. The pushtube connections are now bent too and I need a jack to force the tube lobes up into the bike mounted frame. I'm not really that hard on it. I think the tracks on the 850 provide so much grip that the plow setup is not designed for it. If you're running tires to plow, there won't be nearly as much force on the whole system. If you do run tracks, you've got to go easy, especially with the extended push tubes that have less ability to resist the angled forces. More length equals less strength.

 

FunRide's experience confirms my feeling that push tubes may be more subject to lateral forces that can potentially more easily bend the tubes, among other parts.

I won't be using tracks and my snow is not so much as some of yours so I think I'll be fine with a center mount.

Malt King

 

I believe a front mount will give you more ground clearence. As far as bending it on the trail, it would take a big hit to do so, but that would be better than bending up your machine. It would be giving you some protection the way it is placed and bolted up. Your tires are going to hit before the mount will unless it is a big rock dead center in front of you.

 

It's not necessarily a single or two big hits that will cause issue come winter install. A number of smaller hits will slowly take little ****** out of the lobes and bend small nubs over. I'd definitely take the plate off if you put some miles on the bike in the warmer months. At least on my Moose setup, the clearances between the push tube lobes and the the plate are minimal.

 

I was just trying to say I thought a front mount was more out of the way for summer trail riding and less vulnerable to damage from trail riding than a center mount. Yes, No? I think he thought it the opposite.

 

I just bought the warn pro vantage with 60" blade it is a front mount plow with no ground clearance loss at all hooks and unhooks very easy and seems to be very sturdy i know we get lots of snow in ND and it pushes alot of snow

 

Actually can't comment on the front mounts....but that sounds like a great benefit. Are they that hard to take off, that one would run all spring, summer, fall with the their plow hardware installed. I know it's not particularly fun to install, but....I'd take it off.