Ensuring your horse, armour and sword are in good condition is preparation for the mortally dangerous activity of fighting a battle, but expecting players to run that as an extended contest (every time, too) is not a good idea.
I think whether an extended contest is suitable depends on the types of Heroes you have, and the type of quest. In the quest I recently ran, the Hero Karath Sweet-voice is good at these kind of activities. However, the quest itself had two stages where the questers had to convince someone to join them. To have run them all as extended contests would have been really slow, somewhat repetitive, and rather boring for the players of the other Heroes, so (IIRC) I ran the support gathering stage as a group simple contest*.
Giving Narrators the choice of contest type is a very good feature of the HW rules. Any tweaks to the system should retain it, I feel.
> Not appropriate for a rushed quest (where the preparations will be
> minimal, due to time constraints, like the quest to the underworld in
> the rising dark)
I think choosing an extended contest rather than another type should not depend so directly on the Gloranthan time taken. It should depend on the narrative focus: is the contest dramatically important.
*Using my house rules, which you can read at
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