Mark,
Don't do it! You NEVER want to be standing outside in front of the truck, near the winch, when you're winching. Proper procedure is to engage the onboard winch clutch control, then climb into the cab and shift the pto into gear. Use the foot clutch to control the winch. The truck should be out of all road gears when you do this.
The rear winch is no different, but obviously, it will not be possible to see the load you're winching from the cab. Even so, do not operate the rear winch while standing on the ground. Get up on the deck, and use as much as possible for shelter. Use the remote throttle and clutch to feather in the winch, and start the load coming. It is somewhat unavoidable to operate the rear winch without some exposure, so it's overbuilt and over-cabled, and needs some care and common sense when winching to avoid a line separation. Still, winching is frightfully dangerous, so don't modify the existing equipment. It's well engineered, and will work well and protect you as far as possible. Spend your $$ and time getting all those levers and detents working smoothly, then keep them clean and lubed.
My 2 cents!
Jack
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Sep 02 2001 - 11:15:39 PDT