Very impressive before and after pics. It's a totally different machine!!!
I see on your list of accessories that you bought a Kolpin gun boot. Where did you mount in and what do you think of it?
Eddie
Thanks Eddie! Ya, I knew it would look different, but I didn't think it would be that different. :laughing: I was going to go with a black bed liner, but my son talked me into the desert tan. Which I now agree was a better choice for our area. The only other thing we went back and forth about was the wheels. I wanted plain ITP black wheels, he wanted the Exilir's. There was quite a bit of difference in price, but my main concern was dinging them on rocks and stuff as they are aluminum. Again, he was right. They do look nice, and we don't really do any hard-core rock crawling, so hopefully they'll stay nice for a long time. My plan was to take the ITP wheels and lay down some of the vinyl on those as well. The company said they hadn't seen it done before, but assumed it would work without issue. I am going to try it with my spare wheel.
I got this gun boot via Amazon. This is the Gun Boot 4 and Universal Bracket:
Kolpin 20205 Gun Boot 4.3 with Universal Bracket : Amazon.com : Automotive
I've had a GB on my quad for a number of years (not sure if it's a GB4, but it looks the same), but the mount is different. I got one for each side.
They are pretty decent quality. I think they are injection molded and not rotationally molded. They come with liner, but I normally never use them. I bought a really nice case for my shotgun and use that inside the GB instead. They are sized big enough for just about any weapon you might have, even with optics on them. These have the cover that snaps on and off. I have read that the GB6 (which opens up like a lid) is sort of a pain. I guess the cover doesn't swing up enough to stay open on it's own.... Anyways, the one on my quad and has seen rain, snow, mud, and deep water (over the muzzle end of course and not up to the opening), and has never leaked. And it has taken a beating on brush, small trees and on one occasion, a fairly big rock. I don't know if it would keep the barrel from bending in an accident, but then I wouldn't expect it to.
As to the mounting, I think I have a couple of pictures of them temporarily mounted. I asked my son to check and see. I'll post them if we did take some. The universal bracket can be used on quad racks, roll bars, and just about anything else you can think of....except solid flat (horizontal) things. Well, technically, i supposed you
could mount it like that, but the weapon would be laying on its side. :confused2: Anyways.... they come with a lot of mounting hardware. They do have a mount for the boot that goes across the back of the cab (where my fuel packs are), but the 610 is so narrow, the stocks would be hanging out the sides and I'd be afraid of catching them on something. We only used the main bracket, and the little square U-bolts that come with the kit. They fit nicely over the bed rails. The bracket can be set for two positions (it's got 2 big slots, so really more than two, but for my purpose....2 :laughing: ). The first is with the nose of the GB inside the bed, kind of sitting in the curved recess of the front wall of the bed. The only issue (and it's purely cosmetic) is that for the passenger side, the bracket that pivots is flipped over and because of that, with the nose in the recess, the angle of the GB is higher than the drivers side. Not a huge deal really. The other position I think we'll use is with the GB pretty much parallel with the top of the bed rail. In that position, the nose of the GB is even with the front of the front bed rail and I think about 4 inches above it (the passenger side sits slightly higher because of the flipped bracket). We can tilt them down slightly as well. The 610 is small, so the GB does hang over the back of the bed by about a foot I think. In the nose down position, it still hangs over by about 6 inches. I think hanging over the back will not be an issue, as long as I don't back into something. By being in position 2, the only part of the GB in the bed is the actual mount, and the ends of the U-bolts and nuts. I suppose we could flip that around and put the nuts on the outside, but it would take a backup plate to make that work. Basically position 2 keeps the entire bed open for hauling things. We can load it up to the bottom of the brackets. If we really need to go higher, we could flip the mounts around and the GB would still be parallel to the bed rail, but it would be on the outside of the bed. Make sense? We did look at flipping the mounts around and putting the GB in it's most upright angle and sliding them way forward on the bed. That would put the nose of the GBs down near the battery and fuel tank on the outside of the Mule.
If I remember correctly, you have the Trans Mule which is wider than the 610. You might be able to get away mounting them with the cross-bed mount that Kolpin makes (you could use the universal bracket for this as well I think), or across the back of your headache rack and they would only hang out a little bit. And if you're only running it in the 1 seat mode, you could mount them on the bed rail and not have them hanging off the back.
Now, with all this being said, we haven't mounted them and driven it down the road, so I do have a little concern about shaking or wobble. The mount is pretty beefy and the bed rails seem pretty stiff, so might not be an issue. If they do want to flex from side to side, I was planning on adding a couple more bolts through the bed wall. If the nose wants to swing from side to side, I was planning on making a bracket that would attach to the front wall of the bed, and connects to the front mounting hole on the GB. But I won't be able to check any of this out until I come home again.
Sorry for the long post, just trying to pass on everything I know.
Let me know if you have any more questions.
NV
