Heard back from the Montana guys. I don't know what to think of them. Very slow to respond on facebook messenger, no website, but their facebook page does have pictures and looks legit. He told me $1,200 and would get back to me on shipping to my zip code.


My problem is, I had always planned on the HF 12,000# winch so now I need to look up the dimensions because Montana says their bumper is designed to fit the Warn 9000# EX winch.


Would a 9000# winch have enough ***** to pull a completely stuck H2 out?

 

My guess is a 6000# Warn winch would be as strong as a 12000# Harbor Freight winch.

That being said I have not looked into the HF winches. "Some" of their stuff is very very good, the majority of it is disposable low quality Chinese junk. Their big rolling tool cabinets for example are an excellent value for the money as are a few of their air tools and even some of their better hand tools. Is their tool cabinet as nice and heavy duty as a Matco/Mac/SnapOn, etc? No but from a value standpoint their tool cabinet destroy those others at an eighth the cost.

Maybe their winches are awesome though. Like I said, I've not looked into their winches so I cannot really say for sure. But based on everything else HF, its going to have grossly overrated specs.

 

I have many of their air and electric tools. Only thing I've had go bad was a mini die grinder which still lasted over 4 years of constant use. I have their large rolling tool chest, kicks the hell out of my Lowes branded chest I had. I've also watched a lot of HF winch videos out there and it seems to be pretty stout.


Either way, I won't get into that debate. For the random few times in my life I may need the thing, I'm sure it will work.

 

Time for the old man to reply. Performance and quality would be #1 to me. With that said, not to much worries or scares me these days. Except of course me dying before my wife and she finding out what all this stuff really costs.

So I looked at them all head on and the third, custom fab, was the only one that made me want to unsnap the holster and chamber a round. I don't like all the chrome in the others which may have biased my opinion and some of the designs that seem kind of frilly. To me my truck says I mean only business. Don't care to turn heads or be seen. But when someone does see it they will keep their distance.

T

 

Wait, so what's your pick? lol

 

It would be the third picture which I may have mistaken for the custom fab one.

I dont use a winch winch often but I do have to pull downed trees once in awhile. I use a hitch mount winch so I can use it on the front or rear of the truck.

Does the weight of the bumper, grill guard and winch effect the handling of the vehicle when you are driving on roads?

I live off a road which is kind of rough but if I have 200 lbs in the rear it makes the road ride smooth.

Not sure what that is all about.

T

 

The more I look at them I'm personally liking the Iron Bull one. You eliminate the need for the entire lower plastic grille and floppy corner pieces with that one. Plus a reasonable cost and somewhat local pickup is also a plus.

Oh by the way LoJac - Been a while since I looked but I think it was you that did the oil filter relocate. Do you remember if you posted the part numbers in the thread over at elco? After crawling under mine and seeing the accessibility of the filter I'm thinking on doing the same thing.

 

Part numbers are in my build thread but here's the link for you:




I'm going to move my build thread over to this forum since this is the dominant H2 forum. All the others are mostly H3's now with hardly any H2 traffic.


I agree on the Iron Bull about it being local. I do like the upper plastic stock bumper pieces though.


I'm trying to work a deal with Fusion bumpers on the middle bumper. They list a distributor local to me so I'm hoping they can ship the bumper there to save on shipping and handle the payment through them. I'm not very keen on throwing over $1,800 out in the open to wait 4 weeks for a bumper to show up.

 

Time for Stump the Dummy: winch not included, this is only the bumper, right?

 

Yes sir, bumper only, no winch.