There are some really good ideas here.
Something I always thought would be handy to have back on the farm, was a front-end mounted gin pole or crane that used the winch to raise and lower heavy items. It could easily be hooked up to the two shackle mounts for the clevises.
I'd also like to see something on each end of the front bumper that are similar to levelers for pop up campers, to transfer that heavy weight from the bump directly to the ground and not go through your suspension system and tires. It would be nice to have pads on the end of levelers for stationary work, but also swapped out for some sort of heavy-duty compact tire, so if you needed to move a heavy load to a new location, you can do so and still not transfer that load to the suspension system on your vehicle.
Here are some ideas.
Anybody done this? I've got a few heavy items that I need moved around. The tractor with the front end loader is in NC. The biggest item is my air compressor. It's stupid heavy and took 5 moving guys to maneuver it out of the truck. My initial thought was something like this: But then I saw...
nc4x4.com
Another thing that would be handy, is a mount that's semi-permanent in between the two rear vertical ROPS on the passenger side of the vehicle, and on it you can quickly attach and remove the Pioneer Tool Rack from a HMMWV. It holds a shovel, ax, and mattock. You can buy those racks fairly cheap, and there's no sense trying to design a better mouse trap, when you have what you need already made, and proven.
Here you can see the handle at the top, and I think if you designed something where you can just lift up the rack and drop the handle into a "U" shaped upper attachment point, and maybe a safety pin to hold it in place so it cannot lift out at all, and then at the bottom, lock it in, and maybe add some sort of nylon strap as a backup to hold it in place, you'd be fine, and have something that's easy to mount and remove in just a minute or so.
Military Truck/Humvee Pioneer Tool Kit Rack - Shovel/Axe/Pick.Shovel/Axe/Pick are all in excellent condition. Rack holds all items for easy transport.Dont get stuck, buy this for your off road vehicle.Same kits are on sale on Ebay for $300 or more!$200
www.coueswhitetail.com
I'd also like to see some sort of attachment point for an 18" military machete and its plastic sheath, and a container that holds a 3/8" x 20' tow chain, all on this same semi-permanent mount between the ROPS.
Now, if you need these tools, you can quickly mount them, but if you don't, they come off quick and easy, just like they do on the HMMWV. Just make sure they mount on the passenger side, in the event they somehow come loose, they fly off into the ditch and not oncoming traffic.
The other thing that would be very cool to have, but spendy as well, is a hydraulic pump with an electric clutch and fan belt pulley. You'd need to fab a small hydraulic tank with a filter mount and baffle inside to keep the oil from foaming, but it's not hard to do. I did it on my M38 Jeep for my Mile Marker hydraulic winch. It's nice to have about a 3 or 4 gallon tank at least, if you want to expand the use of the hydraulics. There's 231 cubic inches per gallon so it's not hard to figure out a tank size and location. A one foot by one foot by one foot tank is 7.5 gallons. I also mounted on the front and rear, quick couplers for whatever I might need in the future. I never used them, but I thought why not add them since I'm doing this.
I did this whole setup when I lived up in Wisconsin over 20 years ago. My plan was to mount a skid steer 72" wide hydraulic snowblower on the front of my Jeep. My driveway was like a half mile long and would drift four and five feet high and packed in like concrete. You couldn't plow it even with the county snowplow. They had to use the road grader with the V plow and then spend several hours just beating the living hell out of that machine trying to get through, and driveways were last on their list of snow clearing so I sat for days until they got to me. After two winters of that crap, I decided to build a snowblower and just go out every couple hours and clear the driveway. Now I just moved south and got out of that cold.
I think making a front-end mount for the Roxor for a skid steer snow blower would be very handy, and you're not beating the hell out of your vehicle pushing snow, and looking back, I should have started a plowing business blowing snow. I could have paid for the build in no time. I think I had around $3500 into the whole thing with all new parts, and that was a Muncie pump too, but now those are pushing a grand themselves and the blowers are around $5000, but still, it might be well worth it if you live where it snows a lot.
