Adding a Winch with Accompanying Headaches

[denandannie]

After getting my 2015 Chevy 3500 LB 4WD stuck in the snow in my own drive way, I decided a change was needed.

First, I got rid of the worthless highway tires for some snow tires and then, just in case, I decided to add a winch. After some research, I decided on a Westin HDX grille guard with winch tray and a Warn Zeon 12S winch.

Installing the grille guard was not the simple "bolt on" as the instructions indicated. It required some modifications and the re drilling of several pre drilled holes. After ten hours I finally had it on and it looked awesome.

Two weeks later the winch arrived and I found it would not just slip down inside the winch tray. The winch tray had to be uninstalled first. Fine. Once the tray was laying on my work bench I found the pre drilled winch mounting holes would not line up with the Warn winch, because the winch was slightly too wide. So, after re drilling the mounting holes the winch was finally ready to install back onto the truck. After obtaining a hernia moving it to the truck, and creating a new set of swear words, it was finally bolted on and ready to hook up the electrical.

The winch battery cables would not attach to the battery terminal, plus the neg cable was too short. A trip to NAPA solved the problems.

All that was left was to install the synthetic cable onto the winch drum. Warn doesn't do that for you, they give you the joy of doing that yourself. They give you a piece of wire to try to pull the cable through this tiny, itsy bitsy hole in the drum. Even the Hulk could not pull the cable through the tiny slot.
So after an hour of grunting, swearing and pulling, I finally hooked a long wire to the cable and then hooked the wire to my ATV and pulled it through w/o much effort. Eventually the cable was wound onto the drum and the winch was ready for final testing and cable stretching. That was done w/o incident.

The last item was to install the Westin tow hooks, since they factory tow hooks cannot be reinstalled. However, with the Warn winch being too long, the tow hooks would not fit. After some pondering, I found they would fit upside down if new holes were drilled and longer grade 8 bolts were obtained, which was done.

Finally all was done and the grille guard and winch make the truck one bad-ass looking rig. Total install time was 2 days totaling 14 hours.

Maybe my story will help you should you try a similar truck upgrade.