Posted by Keith in Washington [108.162.246.92] on Wednesday, February 15, 2017 at 11:31:52 :
In Reply to: Re: Tow Hooks posted by Todd in Kansas [162.158.69.18] on Tuesday, February 14, 2017 at 23:52:39 :
On these tow hooks, in the picture, the front bolt holes do not have the standoff like the rear bolt hole. I call these stepped tow hooks. The reason I believe is that stepped tow hooks come off a non-winch truck. The rear bolt goes only through the frame. The front bolt goes through the front bumper and the frame. The stand off on the rear allows the hook to sit level as it makes up for the thickness of the bumper.
Both my PW and WC53 which have winches have tow hooks that are flat. Obviously the WC53 did not come with a winch. On a winch truck the tow hooks are located further back from the front bumper than a non-winch truck. This is because the front which mount uses the hole at the very front of the frame extension. To get around this, they moved the tow hooks further back onto the frame extension and used a hook that has a flat lower surface as they no longer had to account for the bumper thickness.
I have no idea why some have a larger front bolt. Both of my truck have the larger front bolt. It might be that the non-winch truck stepped tow hook has the smaller bolt and the winch truck has the larger bolt. I have not seen enough non-winch trucks to confirm my thoughts. There might be differences between WC and PW tow hooks that I am not aware of. I believe that my WC53 originally had the stepped small hole tow hooks but I replaced them with the flat version when I put the MU2 winch on.
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