10 Ways To Get Your Truck Ready For Winter

my friend mind over everything sent me a message asked if I could do a quick video on my winch setup and the car retrieval kit that I carry in my vehicle for winter time you know everyone has their own ideas on how a truck should be accessorized what you need or may not need and this is not something that everyone's going to be but for me it's absolutely essential I use it all the time it's so a worn electric wedge this is a midsize winch 9,000 pound straight-line pole with a door probably a little over 100 maybe 125 feet of wire rope on it now the way you mount these things it's really important and what I have I've had them mounted solidly most times when you get a winch they're going to sell you a winch bumper and it could be mounted permanently on the front and you cannot remove it I don't like that sometimes you nose into trouble and the only way that you can get out is from is in Reverse and if you have the winch mounted on the front that's not going to do any good at all and before you click off this video and say I'm not this is not something you interest me I'm not going to ever have a winch I'm going to show you some things that you can carry in a truck that will give you the ability to do almost the same thing without the expensive a winch but if you decide to get a winch what I've done is I've built a drawbar that mounts to the frame on the front of the truck with the two-inch receiver hitch on here and I've built this portable mount by just getting a trailer hitch and a big quarter inch or 5/16 plate of Steel on there welding it on there drilling the holes and mounting it this way I can remove this winch and slide it in the rear receiver of the truck so here's the back of my truck you can see here's the rear receiver so that winch that multi mounted I built will just go right into the trailer receiver there I can plug it in and have the capability to winch backwards I've seen guys that put front and rear winches on their vehicles I guess that's one way to do it but you can accomplish the same thing with a lot less money by doing going this route here now of course you can buy the multi mount mounts from Warren industries yourself or from them or you can make one yourself but what I do is I get these heavy-duty plugs I don't remember what they're called Anderson Anderson power products and they use them on forklift batteries and I've got a shortly the winch motor and this simply plugs in here in the front as well as my jumper cables had that same capability I plug in the front to the rear I can reach anything jumpstart people whatever if you do make sure you order the caps if when you're not using it keeps a lot of the road grime out I tie it on there with a piece of crimped aviation cable there but this gives you so much versatility not only that but I've got a 16 foot trailer that I've also welded a receiver on the front that I can take this winch and I can pull cards or cars or heavy loads up on with just having the one winch also take the time and mount some really good sturdy hooks on the front I can't I don't know why a trucks a truck would come from the factory without a good sturdy hook front and rear that you could actually use it for also accessory lighting is so important especially when you live in the country I flip these on and I like the P is there some of the best lights that you can money can buy you're going to pay extra for them but man they'll just work and work forever just to be able to see a long distance to avoid deer all of that I mean the light by missing a deer the light will pay for itself you know ten times over and certainly the last thing you something you definitely don't want to overlook is you want to roller fairlead on the front what a roller fairlead does as you can see it will roll in all directions so if you pull have extreme angles which you're never going to be able to pull everything perfectly straight what this does is it gives a rolling surface for the cable to go across that won't be a pinch point and it won't has a lot less tendency to break your cable this is an absolute must-have so what went should you buy who makes a good winch I am I'm partial to Warren because they're a Northwest company actually that was my first job out of high school is I worked in the Warren factory building these winches right here so I know a lot about a lot about them mile-marker makes a decent winch Ramsay makes a good winch the probably others out there that some new ones that I'm not real familiar with I stay away from the Harbor Freight winches unless you have no other choice I wouldn't find those suitable for anything other than maybe a car winch but if you want something like this you know these things they're electric they're prone to failure anything that's got electricity involved in is going to give you trouble one way or another just these premium winches are going to give you less trouble you don't need to buy a new one you can quite a bit less money on Craigslist used and I'll tell you they they are money well spent and they're an investment that will always hold its value I also like to keep the rain cover these factory warned rain covers are really good they're really tough they stay on well with a couple bungees it really helps the of course the winches are sealed against weather but it only makes sense to to protect it as much as possible you're going to pay you know in excess of a thousand dollars for something like this at least and lifetime you get it all rigged out and you want it to you want to look after it I've had this wage for years and years and I just keep the cover on it and clean the electrical contacts once in a while and never never have any problems with it so I know what you're thinking yeah I'd be nice to have a thousand dollar winch but this is not my budget I can't I want to be prepared I want to be able to handle emergencies or situations but I can't afford that I'll tell you what here is the next best one of the next best options handyman jack or hi-lift jack one of man's greatest inventions what you can do with this thing is limitless I just sometimes I think about what the what the Pioneers would have thought if you could have given all of them to put one of these in their Conestoga's as they were crossing the Rockies what they could have accomplished with these things what it is it's a very strong and robust Jack that it gives you the ability not only to Jack but to spread things but it also works as a great winch if you look at these get the high lift brand don't buy any Chinese knockoffs there don't buy anything that doesn't say a high lift on it you see right here on the heavy cast lifter jaw there is a hole you can put a shackle or you can put a chain through there and on the other end you have this portion here which you can also get a shackle or a cane on or you out there and by jacking it apart it'll go both ways whichever way you flip the switch here it will lift or it will push your spreader or pull whatever how're you want to say it and you can yes it takes a long time but if you're stuck in a snowbank or drift usually it's not very far you have to come I mean usually just a a few feet to get some traction or get back up on the tires if you have some old carpet or something you could throw under there that works really good but a handy jack less than a hundred dollars I see him I see them often times at garage sales estate sales for for half of that is something that's indispensable I would not want to have a truck not equipped with one of these if you want to step up for the handyman Jack I've got your huckleberry here the poles all more power puller man these are great tools been around a long time super robust super high quality a little bit expensive you're going to pay you and be uh prettier back up into three hundred dollar range or so but the nice thing about this is completely portable now I've talked to the manufacturer about these and they are rating this thing at three thousand pound straight line Pole if you put the included pulley on there you can double that but the truth of the matter is this you know they're not going to tell you this at the factory I've worked with these quite a bit I'll bet they pull double that if not triple you know they're not going to say that you know they've got insurance issues on that but this thing will pull a tremendous amount and if you don't if you're working if you're working load or whatever it is you need to do is is too far away from your truck let's say over 100 feet or so you can wrap this thing around the tree it's not so heavy that you can't carry it in a backpack you can do just almost anything with it it's really really wonderful these two tools what a what a great one-two punch for homesteading jobs I can't even can't even go into how versatile they are but it is an option it's not so big that you can't carry it now be careful if you're if you're putting your kit together in your SUV you don't want all this metal in your cab when I was a career firefighter in Colorado I ran interstate 80 a lot of car wrecks I was lead medic on the engine I saw a lot of horrible horrible things and a lot of people got hurt because the things that they put in their vehicles can you imagine this thing at 18 20 pounds whatever is loose in the canopy in your car if you have multiple rollovers or your family in there would kill everyone inside certainly getting off topic a little bit here but it's part of it storage I mean if you're going to have a pickup truck you need to carry these tools I carry chainsaws I carry chains tools I've got a lot of things in here that I carry because I want to be able to handle any situation that might come up as part of the local volunteer fire department sometimes it's quicker for me to respond directly with my truck than it is to come back and get the engine and if conditions are really bad like it is today maybe the engine chained up maybe it's not my truck always is ready and that's kind of why I go overboard so for me I think the best way the best way to store your tools in the back your truck is is one of these toolboxes and there is just no there's just no finer box than weather guard or protec I think Delta still makes a pretty good box to in their commercial side but huge investment I know all these things are expensive and hard to acquire the toolbox like this is $700 $800 or so but I've had I'll tell you a funny story here a story about these locks these locks that they put on the weather guard boxes are really first-rate when I was working construction I had thousands of dollars with the tools in this very toolbox right here I came out in the morning to go to work and I'd noticed that the lock was all Jimmy D'Ambrosio and that someone had taken tried to pry it off and get into the toolbox to steal thousands and thousands of dollars with the power tools nailers and such and then I saw down the side which was really gratifying to me a lot of blood somebody had taken the screwdriver some thief and tried to break that off there and in the process jabbed himself in the hand quite badly and bled all over the truck and down the side but did not get this open so mmm so I save any money by buying a cheap Cobalt or Home Depot style toolbox it's a low quality that any one of those I could I could be in one of those things in 30 seconds if not not less but these not so much so it's what if you have chainsaws inside is it worth spending $700 on a lock that will keep your your stuff secured and just briefly there's the saddle style it is the best you don't want a box that sits down in the bed because you just took two feet out of your bed if you have a shortbed pickup then you have a four foot bed you can't do anything with it you can't carry lumber or anything this gets the box up off the sides you have the bottom you can slip a full sheet of plywood you can get 10 12 sheets of plywood underneath they're still close the tailgate 2x4 is all that so you don't lose that functionality of having a long bed goodness going on on we still haven't got to the bag yet alright let's get into the contents of the bag first thing you want in your retrieval kit good heavy bag I this is my old fire bag that the zipper broke on still works perfectly for this you want tarp cheap tarp take a 8 by 8 ten by ten 12 by 12 whatever you you're going to be laying underneath the vehicle in snow and sleet in ice and you're going to get soaking wet this right here is it's what you want you can strip you can lay that thing down and you can stay dry it's absolutely the way to go let's go into straps here so we're a retrieval staff strap a 20 foot retrieval strap is that's in a it's an investment if you buy a brand new one but I'll show you I'll tell you how to get them cheap so if you go online on eBay or if you know about anyone who works for a big construction company or especially one that deals with cranes crane companies use these super heavy highest-quality straps what's this thing rated for says on there I mean something ridiculous twelve thousand eight hundred pounds at least and you can probably double that you know in engineers cya so what they do is that once they they can't certify them but they've used them for the certain amount of time they have to retire them and usually they give them away to the guys that work for them and then those guys in turn sell them there's a lot of those on eBay they're perfectly fine that's where I got this one nothing wrong with it but you buy it for $10 or $20 instead of $200 whatever these things cost it's that's the way you can get them uh saved a few bucks now of course your kits going to have to be kind of customized depending on what your area is you know we live in the timber country so there's almost always a tree to hook on to or do something with but if you live out in Arizona you don't have that you know guys get stuck in sand maybe you want to look at at a land anchor you know you have to kind of dealer your kids specifically to what your area is like and if I didn't say already a carpet a piece of carpet to throw in your toolbox line the bottom of your tool box with it and then if you get in a pinch you can take it out cut it into pieces and that makes a great traction mat for if for if you don't have a winch or just kind of an impromptu these are tree straps right here and these are one of the few things that I have gotten from Home Depot or that I buy from Harbor Freight because they're such a good value and it's just something that it's I don't need I don't need the top of the line it's going to go around the tree these are rated for sixty four hundred pounds a guarantee the whole a lot more than that because I have put a lot more than that on them but these are really great they've some people call them soft straps but you don't want to wrap a chain around a tree and damage the bark and destroy the tree by putting a soft strap on like that it saves the tree won't do it any harm and you can use it as an anchor and I carry two of these because they're not very long you know we have some huge trees and there's lots of trees that this won't go around so I can hook these two together and that gives me and not only for trees but you can use them to extend your main line you can use them for I can't even go into all the ways that you can use them but these three straps right here are I've never needed anything more than this you're also going to a must have is going to be chains so what's best how many change do you need I twenty and two tens if I was going to be break it down I would rather have I had to make a choice two tens gives you more options you can hook the two tens together and make it 20 or you have chains it's it's just nice to have options but you know because I do a lot of winching in the area and the seen neighbors called and I'm always out doing that stuff in the wintertime I carry an extra one but two tens would be ideal at least one ten would be minimum what size 3/8 5/16 would be absolutely minimum 3/8 would be better this is a 5/16 chain with a 3/8 okay let me I've got I have a real pet peeve about chains it just staggers me how many how many guys don't know this I recently pulled out a guy that was in a Kanaka Lynn Janee R stamp stamps mechanical engineer when he and he was helping me rig to pull out his chain I pull out his car and when I I just assumed the mechanical engineer of all people would understand this and know how how the stuff works I came back to unwitting and he had the chain hooked like this man I'll tell you what I'll never forget today that I had was a young lad out of high school got a job with a my first excavating company and there was this form in there he's terrified he to all he terrified all of us we called him arms his name was Larry because his arms were about the size of a horse's rear leg and he was just ferocious guy with a terrible temper just a scary scary guy i I knew better at the time but something happened and he was yelling at me or whatever and I and I needed to get and I hooked it in like that and he found out he saw that I never I'll tell you what never made that mistake twice whatever you do whatever you never never never hook a chain like this that's not the way they're designed hook a chain back to itself like that that's the way it should be done never don't don't hook it over think don't hook your chain on your soft strap like that that's a sharp edge right there that's almost a chisel cut right there that will you put a load on there that'll slice right through that thing and that chain will come back and kill somebody or damage equipment I'll show you how to connect these two here in a minute when you hook your chains make sure you hook them back to themselves just like that man I hope you guys enjoy watching these type of videos as much as I do making them I I like being prepared my granddad he was always prepared used to go elk hunting and man my granddad one time this was what I was still it was just little but they went to they went hunting one time and he threw a main bearing on his truck which is a pretty major thing he he he had the tools he limped over to a auto parts store and actually changed the main bearing on the crank on the side of the road and made opening morning that's the type of that's the type of guy my granddad was give you any idea okay so here's our bits and pieces kind of our small accessory kit this is going to wrap it up I promise if you've got a winch of course you want to make sure you have your winch controller this is the remote controller that brings in your your cable forward and back it plugs into the winch and it's you want to keep it out of the weather you don't wanna keep it outside a couple Road players a great idea have a couple road flares in there so you don't get ran over you don't want to be underneath of a vehicle when someone comes around the corner and plows into it so having a couple road flares at least is really wonderful to have another essential not that any of this isn't essential is a what they call a block some people will call it a snatch block and it's a heavy cable or heavy pulley that will allow you to to do a gear reduction on your winching so if you run your winch out and you hook this to the vehicle and back you can double your pulling power each time you add a pulley it's an incredible incredible thing to have as well as you can redirect a winch line so let's say you your truck is here and your load is over here and you have a tree here you can redirect so you can change the angle because you can't always pull straight and so it is an essential part the reason why it flips open like that is so you can put your cable inside of it snatch it closed and then put a shackle on a shackle wall rat shackles is this I have a really bad tendency of calling shackles clevis is that they're not clever so these are shackles and what a shackled it gives you the ability to do is to hook on to all sorts of loads most import cars that you'll see you'll see on the on the front and the back is a really solid purchase point that they use for tying them down when they bring them over on the car carriers and that's a great point to pull to pull someone out I have seen people throw chains around bumpers and I know I'm not always there I don't always understand exactly you know what the conditions are but man I you can really do thousands of dollars of damage and then what have you how have you helped someone they could have called a wrecker out there that would have done it properly and cost them maybe three four or five hundred dollars and you just pulled their their whole front suspension out and now you're going to cost them three thousand dollars so having a good several sizes of shackles like this it is really essential as well as we talked about earlier how do you connect your chain to your soft strap right there that's how you connect them you can use that to connect those two so do you need three of these you don't - two is usually good make sure that they fit your block make sure that you can get them inside your largest straps toe strap whatever it is and that's all you need and some of the final things is have a keep a pair of gloves in your kit the gloves that I don't like these particularly wearing them too much but these Atlas Jersey cotton Jersey with the rubber on them are really great from doing tire chains and rigging because it keeps your hands dry your leather gloves are going to get soaked then they'll freeze and they get slimy and they're just not great for this type of work where these are are cheap you can get them for two or three dollars at any hardware store and put those in your kit they'll keep your hands warm and then they have enough rubber on the front where they'll keep your hands dry and you have really good dexterity and grip with them I also keep in this kit a pair of don't put your good vice grips in here but I mean how many of us don't have a pair of Chinese vice grips you know laying around there or a good pair of pliers because these guys here are notorious for getting sticky they do have a hole in them so you can take a chisel if you have one or a punch and get them open but these can really be a bugbear if you don't have a pair of pliers handy you should have a good tool kit in your toolbox but this is this is something that you'd want to have and then a sharpie because every time you pull someone out they're very grateful and they want your name and address so they can send you some cookies or baked goods or a letter or whatever so have the sharpie because you will be asked you'll be you'll save the day so let's wrap it up so a lot of you watching may think that this is just complete overkill but it really isn't if you live in this environment is this a kit you're going to need to carry in your se review SUV if you live in the city now of course not but there's things you can incorporate wouldn't be a bad idea to have a chain or a toe strap and a shackle or two those things can can really come in handy you know I can't you never know what's going to happen I mean it happens that I had my neighbor call in the middle of the night one o'clock in the morning and say that you know a couple young kids a couple girls have turned their car over and they're pin and they can't get out and they've been there for a couple hours and and you know the fire department may or may not show up they couldn't show up for hours so having these things not only from my own use but I feel I don't know maybe it's just that I have that mentality for working with the fire department and being a member of the fire department that I I have learned to to be prepared and I've seen so much so much horror and I've seen so many terrible accidents and and I have been able to very very blessed been able to relieve pain and suffering and loss of property and those things because of the preparations of the fire department because of even my own preparations it happens from time to time and there's there's just nothing that feels better than that I think it's the essence of a mess of manhood is to have do whatever you can in your power to relieve the suffering and to be able to help your neighbors whoever that may be you know it doesn't even mean you need to know them but just some things to consider this is not the definitive list and this is not not saying that this is you need to have all these things this is even the best it's just my experience being brought to bear in the situation which is considerable because I grew up elk hunting and driving in the snow and I've just got a lot of experience with it off-roading and such and so that's why we're here we're here to learn learn from each other so add what you think may be lacking in the list and I like to read those comments and because I enjoy hearing from experience so I can make my kit better as I have I've got no ego in here I'm simply just sharing what what is a culmination of items that has worked well for me that I've that have been 20 years or so in the building so thanks for watching and we'll see you guys on the next video 24 minutes these videos are getting out of hand you know I've had to change the thought on this I don't know if I'm right or wrong but so many of you have contacted me and said when I was doing videos that were 10 12 minutes long like these videos are too short and want longer videos YouTube for us has has taken the place of television and it's people are not unaccustomed to sitting down and watching a program for 30 minutes or so so is it too much asked to make your videos longer and I had so I have been trying to do that and making these videos a bit longer man when I do the upload I just think Oh should I have cut half that out of there is there it my if he's going on too long so I need feedback because I I don't know what it looks like at the other end it's easy to get kind of myopic on my end and have this impression kind of what people are thinking and and are they enjoying the videos I mean I can the audience retention is fantastic it's always been in the 60s and 70% but I want to know let me know would this be better to break up into a two-part series is that more easier to watch or two to consume but I don't know I just don't know let me know what you think so thanks for watching if you wouldn't mind taking a moment to click the thumbs up I would appreciate that commenting is always appreciated Mrs W and I it's one of our favorite pastimes in the morning to read through the comments we receive a tremendous amount of encouragement and the support that I receive in the comments really invigorates me to to produce more content and oftentimes gives me the very ideas like this video this video would have never taken place and had it not been for a subscribers request so that's what makes YouTube so great it's personal and we can learn together so thanks for watching and we'll see you guys on the next video

Channel: Wranglerstar

Views: 516,980

Rating: 4.9300718 out of 5

Keywords: top ten truck accessories, warn winch, ramsey winch, mile marker winch, highlift jack, vise grip, tarp, snatch block, chain, logging chain, tow chain, atlas gloves, road flair, sharpy, sharpey, how to prepare your truck for winter

Id: 0RPcn1YdBNw

Length: 26min 18sec (1578 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 09 2016