Setting up rear winch power for pickups; Mile Marker and Fab Fours make the perfect team
Rear-mounted winches are a rarity in the everyday world of pickup owners. For many, the thought of having electric winches front and rear is overkill. For some, however, a rear-mounted winch makes perfect work sense.
In heavy construction and oil/gas pipeline work, winches mounted at the rear of work trucks are welcome accessories that serve multiple purposes.
Rear-mounted winches are great tools for pulling broken vehicles or equipment onto a trailer deck, or winching without having the front of the truck being put in an awkward, and sometimes-dangerous, position.
Installing a rear-mounted electric winch is fairly easy if you have the right components. We teamed up with two of the best to outfit a GM dually: Mile Marker and Fab Fours.
A Mile Marker SEC 9.5 winch and universal mounting plate are the main components to a rear-winch setup.
We selected a Mile Marker SEC 9.5 electric for this application.
The SEC9.5 is a strong, reliable planetary-design unit with a maximum pull of 9,500 pounds. It is powered by a 4.8hp series-wound motor that drives a planetary gear setup with a 212:1 ratio.
Its compactness and light physical weight make it an ideal candidate for rear mounting.
We mounted it behind Fab Fours’ 75-pound Black Steel bumper, which is a good heavy-duty “ranch style” replacement for OE rear bumpers.
Line-X coat it with their best spray-on liner, Line-X Premium, to further enhance the bumpers’ appearance and field durability.
Installing a rear winch on a pickup requires a little forethought as there aren’t any specific mounting kits for such an application.
They key is to use Mile Marker’s universal channel mount ($110) to save time on the fabrication process.
Steel extension plates were made to attach the universal winch mount to the Dually frame rails.
To that you’ll need to cut/fabricate 1/4-inch steel extension brackets to hang the winch/mount between the frame rails and the spare tire hanger crossmember.
The installation and fabrication of parts really isn’t that difficult when you slide under the truck and look at what needs to be done.
Mile Marker’s winch control box is then remote wired so the winch control cable plugs in next to the license plate step while the box is mounted between the winch and the bumper.
We used battery cable, run inside the driver’s-side frame rail, to bring power directly from the batteries under the hood to the winch control box.
To mount the fairlead, we cut out a small piece of the Fab Fours bumper for the cable to exit behind where the license plate normally resides and drilled holes to bolt on the roller fairlead.
Then we used a flip-up license plate holder that attaches to the fairlead keeps the truck street legal.
A Mile Marker SEC 9.5 winch and universal mounting plate are the main components to a rear-winch setup.
Steel extension plates were made to attach the universal winch mount to the Dually frame rails.
