Patent Application
20190084466
This disclosure relates to a pick-up truck having a winch assembled below the bed floor with a cable entrained over a pulley attached to a front wall in the center of the bed area.
Pick-up trucks are popular, in part, because they may be used to transport a wide variety of objects. For example, pick-up trucks may be used to transport relatively heavy wheeled vehicles such as motorcycles, All Terrain Vehicles (ATVs), snow mobiles, personal watercraft, and lawn tractors. Ramps may be used to facilitate loading and unloading wheeled vehicles into the bed of the pick-up truck, but even with the use of ramps heavy objects may be difficult to load into the truck bed that may be more than three feet above the ground.
Winches may be used to facilitate loading vehicles into the truck bed. Bed winch mount assemblies are known for attaching a winch and winch motor or drive to pick-up truck beds. However, the assemblies are designed to be attached to the top of the floor of the truck bed, stake pockets on the top edge of the sidewalls, the end wall of the bed, or the cab of the pick-up truck. These types of winch mounting assemblies take up cargo space within the truck bed. Permanent connectors or adapters are required to be attached to the pick-up truck to receive the bed winch mount assemblies that necessitate drilling holes in the truck bed and may compromise the anti-corrosion coatings and paint.
Aluminum pick-up trucks have been developed to reduce vehicle weight and provide improved fuel efficiency, increased cargo capacity and better handling. Fasteners such as common steel screws and bolts are difficult to adequately secure to the body panels forming the pick-up truck bed and are not recommended to be used with an aluminum pick-up truck box. In addition, galvanic corrosion may develop between the aluminum body parts and steel fasteners that can adversely affect the paint or durability of the pick-up truck bed.
This disclosure is directed to solving the above problems and other problems as summarized below.
According to one aspect of this disclosure, a pick-up truck is disclosed that includes a a truck body including a truck bed having a floor and a front wall. A winch drive is assembled to the truck body below the floor. An upper pulley is assembled to the front wall and a cable is extendable and retractable from the winch drive. The cable is routed over the upper pulley through an opening defined by the front wall to load articles into and unload articles from the truck bed.
According to another aspect of this disclosure a winch is disclosed for a pick-up truck bed having a floor, and a front wall. The winch includes a winch motor and spool assembled to the truck body below the floor. An upper pulley is assembled to the front wall with a cable wound around the spool that is extendable and retractable from the spool. The cable is routed over the upper pulley through an opening defined by the front wall. The opening is spaced from the floor to facilitate loading articles into and unloading articles from the truck bed.
According to other aspects of this disclosure as it relates to either the pick-up truck or winch, a guide channel may be attached to a cab-facing surface of the front wall that extends upwardly from the lower pulley through the guide channel to the upper pulley.
The winch drive may be attached to a bracket that may be attached to a bottom surface of the floor of the truck bed and a lower pulley may be attached to a clevis provided on the bracket.
The winch drive may include an electric motor and a spool adapted to be rotated by the motor to extend and retract the cable from the spool.
A lower pulley may be attached to a bottom surface of the floor and a guide channel may be provided that extends upwardly between the lower pulley and the upper pulley. The cable may extend from the lower pulley through the guide channel to the upper pulley.
A remote-control system may be operatively connected to the winch drive assembly that may be utilized to control the winch drive assembly.
The above aspects of this disclosure and other aspects will be described below with reference to the attached drawings.
The illustrated embodiments are disclosed with reference to the drawings. However, it is to be understood that the disclosed embodiments are intended to be merely examples that may be embodied in various and alternative forms. The figures are not necessarily to scale and some features may be exaggerated or minimized to show details of particular components. The specific structural and functional details disclosed are not to be interpreted as limiting, but as a representative basis for teaching one skilled in the art how to practice the disclosed concepts.
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The embodiments described above are specific examples that do not describe all possible forms of the disclosure. The features of the illustrated embodiments may be combined to form further embodiments of the disclosed concepts. The words used in the specification are words of description rather than limitation. The scope of the following claims is broader than the specifically disclosed embodiments and also includes modifications of the illustrated embodiments.
