Mounting a military winch on my 22

I have had an old WWII military winch in storage for quite a while and I have had a pipe dream to design a well thought out mount to get it back on a machine. It used to be on my narrow gauge 22 with a cobbled up frame made by the previous owner. This mount had the seat raised up to sit on top of the fenders to provide room for the clutch control and framing. We used it for light logging for many years but when I restored that cat, I took it off as it did not live up to the like new and stock condition of the restoration. Long story short, I have spent a good deal of time and thought into a more professional style that should work out just fine. Power to the winch is from the stock PTO. I will install it on my wide gauge "daily driver" 22.

Some before pictures to kick it off. The nicest thing of the old mount was the incoroporation of the logging sheave. This worked very good as a substitue to a normal fairlead and in combination as a mini arch. I opted not to use the sheave in order to simplify the frame design, and not have such a high placed vertial load sticking out so far from the back of the tractor. I will not use this for logging so the extra height, although minimal is not needed.

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The winch itself is a Heil brand, model 125-G I believe, 10,000 or 12,000 pound unit. Almost identical and interchangeable to the very popular Garwood brand used on 6x6 military trucks. Since these pics were taken, I have dismantled the unit for a complete clean and inspection. It is sandblasted and will be painted up nice. Gears were good. I know it is powerful enough to snap a 5/8" cable, which I have witnessed (caused!).

I am a mechanical engineer by profession and I have CAD software to make the model and subsequent drawings. I love doing this where I reverse engineer not only the winch but the tractor mounting points and other constraints, and then design from there. My requirements were this:
1. Must fit in the space under the seat in the original position.
2. Must be able to utilize the orginal draw bar including the swing capability.
3. Controls design and placement require little to no modification to the original fenders, etc. (no big holes).
4. Must not protrude any farther than necessary from the back of the machine. The mounting pattern for the original draw bar support is not strong enough for a long cantelever shape. You can barely see in the pictures I have added additional mounting bolts that will connect to a shear plate mounted to the final drive case (plate not shown yet).
5. Need some provision for side pulls either by fairlead rollers or the sheave method. I ended up going with fairlead rollers.

I am happy to say that I have been successful, so far.

I have attached two shots of the model. The cat is of course yellow, and the winch is green. The new steel frame is gray. The drum release clutch control is blue, which comes out at the right side of the seat box. Details not shown are the brake cable and lever. For the brake lever, I am using a Honda Civic emergency brake handle. More pics on that later. I actually made two designs, which used different approaches for winch assembly in the frame. The first was a wrap around box with the winch coming out from the top. I then made the current and final design which allows the winch to be removed out the back of the frame. This is why the back plate is removable, the all the guts come out straight back. The frame can stay mounted to the tractor this way too. The only clearance issue I see is that I have to use a low profile hitch pin for the draw bar if I let it swing. It gets tight on the left and right swing side, but the drawbar can swing fully.

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The plate parts are ordered from the laser cutter right now. Total price is about $350. Not cheap but worth it to me. Rollers cost $120. I am looking forward to getting the parts here and starting the welding assembly. I will of course post progress pictures as I go.

Enjoy!

These are old pictures now, but you see how it was mounted. I spent many hours on that cat tugging out logs!

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Hi Dan,
I'd like to see the finished product.
I also have a winch for my Twenty Two.
Just haven't gotten to it yet. Hyster/Willamette I believe

I like your thoughtful approach Dan 👍 It looks like the PTO will still be usable with the winch in place, but I'm sure I'm mistaken?

Scott,
I would like to see your winch setup too. Did you already post pictures?

Neil, the PTO is not useable for anything but the winch. I never used it anyway, and I have a JD tractor loader for pto work anyway.

I really miss having a winch since I live in a semi wooded are and often have trees to pull down or out. I like to get the stumps out if I can and the winch makes that possible for such a light Cat.

Someday I will finish my D2 restore and I have a D2N for it. That is a few years off I believe.

Hi Dan,
No I never posted any pictures. It's in storage at a friends right now
It'll be a while before I can

Picked up the plates from the metal supplier yesterday. All is looking good except the side plates with the bigger cuts ended up a little warped. I think I can easily straighten them with a sledge hammer.

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I added a couple of shots of the rebuilt winch. Cleaned and ready for primer. I am going to prime it before welding up the mount so the spatter is less likely to stick to the bare metal. One mess I want to avoid cleaning up.

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I picked up the rollers and the angle iron metal 'ears' that hold the front of the winch castings. Bushings for the rollers also came today.


We will see how far I get this weekend with the welding.

wow looking good i too have a PTO winch i would like to install on My D2J3 as i got a logging arch for it plus it's always better too have a winch than not and have not had luck with getting a D2N winch i guess there was not much call for them on the flat ground. this may be a dumb question but are you only running power in ? or how are you reversing the winch with the PTO or you just free wheeling out? would it there be any damage if the PTO trued backwards say if you where to let off on the winch and still had a load on the line or are you just relying on the worm gear to stop that from happening? take lost of Photos as i will to watching very closely to this neat project. i like a cat with a winch on it cus that means that the seat like you said will be raised giving me a little more leg room as i 6'3" keep up the good work.

nice project!!
i am interesting in the steps till its finished!
its driven by chain from the pto from the tractor? tractor has a handle in front of seat for pto to switch on ?
and i see a clutch so you can clutch it out to winch out and under power winch in?

Hi Mog,

This winch is power in only, and free spool out. No reverse capability.

There is a brake band not installed that keeps it from spooling out. It will hold mostly but it can spin out. I will show the brake setup after it is installed.

MARCOTEN,

It is chain drive from the pto shaft. The control is the standard PTO lever. When there is no tension, the release pops right out. You cannot release cable tension by the clutch with this winch.

I have been busy welding up the pieces into something that looks like the model! It is a very tight squeeze and unfortuately I am finding a few minor mistakes here and there, mainly from not being able to precisely measure and model the shape of the winch. The grinder and cutting torch are my friends in this case. Nothing major. There is always warpage from welding and the C-shape of the frame tended to open up a bit. In hindsight, I should have made those plates with temporary connection to close the "C" and prevent spreading, then cut it out after welding.

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After assembling and straigtening the main frame, I began the fitting by attaching the winch to the back plate. This sets all the winch parts in the correct relative position for fitting everything else. Placing it on the plate side down, I then lower the frame over the winch. At that point I welded on the angle brackets that attach the front of the winch to the frame.

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The lower plate holds the drawbar brackets but this plate is too close to the gearcase to use through bolts and nuts. To deal with this, I cut out the plate and welded in two grade 8 nuts. I positioned these with the actual drawbar plate (not shown). Before and after pictures.

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Detail of the overall progress. Next is the brake band mounts and the fairlead pillow blocks.

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