Help! Best winch for your money?

Hi there! I'm brand new here (just actually got myself a 2015 taco) but needless to say I'm unfamiliar navigating the forums and don't know much about anything yet. But I'm looking to get my bf a winch for Christmas and obviously can't ask him about them or he would know. I know he says he needs a 8000-9000 lb winch and it would sit on an off road pipe bumper that he has on his first gen. If anyone can give me advice or point me to a post that already has this answered thank you!!

 

The best winch is the one you have and have the accessories and knowledge to safely operate.

 

I think what you'll find is that folks here generally recommend Warn as the brand to get. They are known for quality, and that's important when you're in a situation where you need a winch. On a first-gen, an M8000 is a good bet (or an M8000-S to splurge), and a favorite here.

For cheaper options, you might look at the Warn VR line of winches, as well as SmittyBuilt. These tend to be the winches that "work" but folks are a bit less sure on quality (since they are largely manufactured overseas).

Warn is also having a rebate now, which can save you a bit there. Also, be sure to check out the Black Friday thread. Some of those vendors may have good prices worth taking advantage of.

 

If my GF bought me anything less than a Warn M8000 I would get rid of her in a Denny's parking lot in the snow and I'd keep her dog.

The Hazard Fraught people will be in here to tell you how great chinese ones are and how they drink $6.00 beers and eat $12.00 sandwiches for lunch with all the big money savings.

 

"For the money " is a useless phrase. Do you mean for $1.50, or for 2.5 million? It's right up there with "you get what you pay for" when it comes to saying a whole lot of nothing..

So how much are you talking?

What is your intended use? Bumper ornament or using it 10x every weekend?

Self recovery, or group recovery?

Important ?s.


If you only have $200 to spend you're aparently going to have your bf leave you at Dennys for some reason. And if you want to keep your bf you need to get a 2nd job so you can afford a warn. Or maybe you'll get lucky and not have an idiot for a bf and he would be happy getting a card and a nice dinner

Which is odd since some if the warn line is made in china, and much of the rest of the line is assembled in the us, but chinese parts. Their top end stuff is us/us, but may have some small bits made in china.

Fwiw, the cheapest winch you have when you need it is 100x better than the most expensive one you are looking at in a catalog. More people are (likely) saved every day with non warns than warn does in a year.

 

Welcome to Tacoma World!

This recommendation is spot on, you want to buy something quality for vehicle recovery. If my GF got me a Warn for Christmas I would be really impressed. While the -S (synthetic line) is a great upgrade over the base model steel line, your BF can always upgrade just the cable later from steel line to synthetic. I would easily take a high quality brand name 8000lb American made winch over a 9000lb off brand Chineese made counterpart. The VR series from Warn are Chineese made, but I would prefer that to SmittyBuilt.

 

Only the VR is actually made in China, the other Warn winches are made in Oregon. How many of the parts are foreign vs domestically sourced I don't know. Warn makes the statement that their VR winches are not generic rebadged Chinese but made in their own factory to their specs.

Not sure, many commercial trucks have Warn or Superwinch and if I was to guess on a daily basis more stuff is pulled by utility, logging and mining trucks than recreational recoveries in a year.

My $0.02 is there's no reason to spend a little money for something you can't rely on. The problem with a winch is it's something you're never going to use, it just sits out there in the weather being beaten up but when you need it, it needs to work and work safely. The great thing about a competitive market is you can get just about anything you want. I'd personally only spend money on name brands with reliable records with the country of origin being somewhat less important.

One thing nice about Warn is they don't change things often and have been around for a very long time. I just got parts to rebuild my XD9000 that was originally built in probably 2000ish, so even though I spent $1000 for it at the time it's lasted 17 years and just needs $15 in grease, gaskets and brushes every few years. Buy once, cry once.

 

Another vote for WARN.....
Do you offroad often? And do you do extreme trails/terrain? Go bigger than what you think you'll need. You're better to have it and not need it, than need it and not have it. We had a Warn 9500 on our Jeep for years (many years ago). We've used it in some pretty serious & technical pulls where multiple snatch blocks were involved. The Warn never hiccuped or hesitated and was always reliable. Granted - like anything else - if you take care of it, it'll take care of you and that includes setup, maintenance and learning how to use it properly.

 

I used to offroad a Suzuki samurai, weighed about 20 pounds. It had a 12k on it. Definitely never felt under winched

 

the most important spec on purchasing a winch is the duty cycle. The duty cycle is how many minutes in an hour can it pull at its rated capacity. The Harbour Freight winches have a 5% duty cycle... in real the real world that is 3 minutes of pulling at capacity with a 45 minute cool down, dont waste your money on a harbour freight winch.

 

I have a Superwinch Tigershark 9500 with Synthetic line and my truck is a pig. It has worked very well for my needs

 

Oh wow I appreciate all the input! What I’m getting from this is that I’m going to have to get him a Warn besides being made in China what’s so bad about Smittybuilt?

Intended use for it would be self recovery and maybe recovery for my truck if needed. He off-roads a few times a month but just trails here in Montana, nothing too intense but definitely in some deep snow during the winter months.

When I asked him about winches he says he ideally wants a Warn but he would buy anything that would save him from calling for a tow

 

Snow pulling is a different need than basic offroading self recovery. Most hard stucks on technical trails are solved with 5 seconds of winch time. I'm making that number up, but it's usually over pretty quick. Most people in the clubs I've been in consider a winch as an absolute last resort. It takes 30 seconds to rig a strap to another vehicle and be on your way. And the same stuck takes 10 minutes of setup and reset every time you winch, plus you want to rewind the drum at the end of the day.

Snow though, that can be a Looooong hard pull if you're trail busting. The level of stuck doesn't usually get as bad as mud but it can be pretty bad. If he plans on winching non stop I'd look at a hydraulic instead of an electric. Duty cycle refers to the winch at 100% load. Anything less extends that time, and unless you really exceed it you'll probably be ok. By the time you've really overworked the winch you have probably smoked your battery and will be getting towed home anyway.

The last warn vr manual I read just said to use the winch intermittently with cooling periods, I don't recall them mentioning actual duty cycles and cant seem to find it anywhere else as they dont advertise it. Which would be for 1 of 2 reasons. Either it's so good it's not worth mentioning. Or its so bad it's embarrassing. According to http://www.fourwheeler.com/how-to/1205or-warns-new-vr-winches-meet-todays-demands/
It's the latter. 5%.

Fwiw out of all the years I had winches, doing everything from mild trails to technical, dry to enough snow to bury trees, and on everything from the samurai to an f250, they spent 99% of the time as bumper weights. .09% pulling down trees and other chores, and at most .01% doing recovery work.


Regardless of how much you spend there are a couple things you DO want.

As a want: Synthetic line, not a must but the very first time he runs a piece of frayed cable through his hand he's going to start shopping. It takes a little extra care but it is so much nicer to work with. A safety thimble should go along with this imo. A hook will work but a thimble is nicer.

A must at the minimum: A recovery bag with a tree saver, at least 2 blocks, at least 3 d rings. A single block/pully doubles the capacity of your winch and halves the work it's doing. With enough of them you don't even need a winch. A small child could move a semi I'd also include an anchor. Just because you have a winch doesn't mean you have an anchor point within winching distance. You can diy so e pretty good anchors.

And if he plans on actually winching, some one that can show him how to do it safely. Rigging a winch badly can do some real damage and is a big safety concern. Rigging it correctly keeps you safe, let's you do off angle pulls and even winch yourself backwards.

 

I just remember the scene in The Gods Must Be Crazy with the Land Rover in the tree. You could have probably actually done that, winch your Suzuki pointed straight up.

 

Those winches are a great deal, $350 for the basic 9500 lb model with steel rope and $500 for one with synthetic rope.

 

Iirc, the last "shootout" I read was Peterson 4wd mag. It's been a few years but engo came out on top in every or almost every test. Then they gave warn first place. Because the shipping box it came in was prettier. They came in 3rd if you ignored how pretty your recycle bin would be after the install.

 

I was soooo tempted on more than 1 occasion. I had it going against gravity several times just for giggles but never actually airborn.

 

Is this the Fourwheeler article you're talking about? There were many reasons they ranked the 9.5XP as #1 besides being packaged and labeled well. Best motor, second quietest, extremely well lubed from the factory, ran coolest (e.g. the duty cycle @Glamisman mentioned), high line speed. They actually destroyed it but it took the same 16,000 lbs stall as the T-Max.

BTW,

$32 AeroShell Grease 64 (formerly 33MS) Extreme Pressure Grease - 14 oz Cartridge

this Aeroshell is the current equivalent of the grease they use. Planetary winches all look mostly similar but the devil's in the details and using a $25 per tube aircraft grease is just one thing you can point out in the level of quality. I don't know if the VR winches use it, but that's what the M8000 and up do AFAIK.

 

Valid points. I put bogged in mud pulls as the hardest on winches but for one reason. When you're stuck in snow as least the air temp is cool and you can pack snow on the winch. Mud is the opposite, when it gets on everything it acts like a blanket to prevent air from cooling the motor and makes things worse.

I wouldn't get too wrapped around the axle finding the smallest possible number to prove a point Even the best industrial winches will have a worst case duty cycle that may be single digits. Electric winches will always have a low duty cycle when worked hard, just the nature of the beast. Even with no load many electric winches won't have 100% duty cycle, just spinning the motor and gear train heats them up.

The Series 15 Warn, their 15,000 lbs industrial winch, has an 8% duty cycle at first layer full load (at 5.2 ft/min) drawing 561 amps (12V). Go down to 1/2 rating and the first layer duty cycle is still only around 15%. Even their Olympus 25S monsters (these winches weigh over 200 lbs) only have a continuous use (100% duty) rating from 0 to 5,000 lbs load. It has a first layer full load pull (at 5.7 ft/min) duty cycle of 28% at 258 amps (24V).

All excellent advise!

 

Warn M8000S done