Here is what i made. Its prety much like the Kurt one, except i added a few features. I put my burshguard mounts on the ends, and tow hooks right next to it.

I aint used it yet, but I do know that it does hang low. I do recomend havin a leveling kit with one of these things. I aint hit anything with my stock setup yet, but when i had this red truck, i never had to worry about anything like that. If you have a body lift, it might will have to be modifyed so that it dont hang down too far. Probably will have to just chopp the back arms off and re bend some to fit right.

It only weighs 75 pounds i think. It was pretty easy to make.



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It looks wierd just hanging on there right now, but when i get my brush guard made, that probably will make it look better.

 

Damn cowboy! You can manufacture those and sell them for profit! That looks awesome. Call the patent office.

 

That looks great but it does hang a bit low. I'da probly tried to fab one up and mount it to where I'd do some cuttin' on the front bumper. Maybe an exit point where a front license plate would go...

 

this is great..but 8 inches upper

 

I 100% agree with yall, It does hang pretty low for off-roading use, but at the time, I wasnt really interested in chopping my truck up for something that i will rarely use. I built this so that i could get the most use out of 75 pounds of steel on the front end of my truck to mount my brush guard, that i aint got built yet, from. But if i put a body lift on the truck i have now, i might re look at doin this thing differently. But I dont have a winch, and this was a fast and easy thing to make.

 

i like the idea of bodylift

 

Nobody doing a suspension lift for 3rd Gen Daks yet?

I was thinking of fabb'ing up a nice bull bar or grille guard for the receiver hitch after I finish my rod holder project. Problem for me is I don't have access to a pipe bender and I think it'd look lame to weld up one using only straight angles. The other option I was thinking about was picking up a bull bar off of fleabay on the cheap (there are a number of black ones out there for around $100) and welding a 2" square pipe to the center cross piece. I ain't decided on that one yet...

 

Dakkkota: I am wanting, now, to take a look at a truck with the 3" lift, so that i can see behind the bumper to see how much room and what is and is not there, so that i can fab up some sort of bracketry and put one of these things out the center of where the licens plate goes, and still have tow hooks in a decent place with all of this stuff. (that is a nother thing i wanted with this setup, tow hooks)


Nope, no suspension lift yet. Id love to have one, but id immagine that it would be a little expensive if there were one.

It took me about a year and some change to make this deal. I am slow with my projects. I was in the process of drawing up my brush guard up right mounts, so that i could put them in my cad software at work and then CNC mill them out, but i had some unfortunate happenings with my red truck. I have some 1.5 inch 4140 crom-moly steel tubing at work that i am gonna make my light guards out of, but i aint got access to a tubing bender either, and that might be a little too big for my truck. I am thinking of goin with some smaller tubing about 7/8 inch or so, and use that 1.5 in between the uprights. I am a little indicisive of how i am going to build this thing. I wished i had a cad model of my truck so that i could draw up all of this and see what it looks like before i waste money building it, allong with many other projects that people may have.

 

I'm probably going to catch flack for Necro-Posting, 🧟‍♂️🧟‍♂️🧟‍♂️🧟‍♂️
But even today in May of 2022 if you google 2006 Dodge Dakota winch mount, this thread is one of the first results, so I felt I would take advantage of my 11 year old post and add some closure.

I was gifted a 12,000lb Badland winch. and some Angle Iron drops, so i thought I'd give it a shot. :-)



This 12k pound Badland winch will fit just fine, I can either space the front bumper out 3/4" or I can Notch the lower radiator support on one side or the other to clear the motor (See second pic for detail)

This is the Lower Radiator support bar that i'm going to notch and bolt a piece of steel to the back of to restore it's strength

I had to clock the gearbox on this winch to allow the free spool lever to be accessible, I am going to try it like this, but if it's too difficult to get to, I will re-clock the gearbox to have it accessible from underneath the front bumper

This is the Base of the frame I made, I still need to add a LOT of re-enforcement and add some sort of bracing from the winch plate to the fairlead mounted on the front bumper. Or I may decide to add the fairlead behind the front bumper and hide it with a license plate. I haven't decided yet.

My plan is to replace the factory bumper studs with 5/16 Grade 8 Hardware and some Very thick washers. I still need to make the bars that will tie back to the factory tow hook bolts top and bottom.

 

Very cool, on my truck I hacked up a winch plate and pressed out the tow hook mounting studs and through bolted it (really not enough steel still there to make me happy, probably going to weld it directly to the tow hook mounts, but was pressed for time). I have a cheapo chinese 12k winch in there now and the motor and free spool lever are swapped from what you have, I actually chopped off the lever square so I could just open the hood and put a socket on it to lock in the winch.