Which Warn Winch
03-11-2010, 04:57 AM
#31
JK Super Freak
The real issues to think about for a winch selection are not really addressed so far:
1) Duty Cycle
2) Speed UNDER LOAD
3) Capacity at distance
4) Water/weather resistance
5) Your patience
6) Critical Mission Situation
--------------------------------------------------
If you read your manual for the cheap winches with permanent magnets, etc....the duty cycle is very limiting.
You may have a limit of 3 minutes of pulling before needing to allow it to cool for 9 minutes, etc.
You also might be only able to pull at about 3' per minute under load.
So, 3 minutes of pulling, pulls you a grand total of 9', then you cool off another 9 minutes....
and pull another 9' for 3 more minutes, rinse, repeat....
That's agonizing.
The better winches, series wound motors, better heat sinks and cooling, etc...help to raise the duty cycle, and allow less cooling off between pulls.
The better winches are faster under load, so you also don't NEED to pull as long to do the recovery.
The better winches are sealed better, so they last longer under adverse conditions.
The better winches do not lose as much speed under load.
The better winches do not lose as much load capacity with wraps.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, if you are choosing a winch, you need to think about the above to narrow the selection process.
The other things are related to YOU, not the winch per se....
How much patience do you have? Are you going to really let the winch cool of as required to honor the warranty/prevent it from prematurely burning out, etc? - Or are you going to crank the sumna beetch to death to get the hell out of the mud hole faster w/o worrying about it?
Do you wheel in adverse conditions, like swamps and jungles, live in a high humidity area, subject your winch/truck to slurries of acidic sand (Like in the Pine Barrens, etc...)?
If the winch were to break down, is it a critical situation? Are you now stranded in the boonies, with zombies mere minutes away, and your legs broken? Do you have cell phone reception? Do people know where you are/able to reach you?
IE: how bad IS IT if the winch doesn't work, a real problem, or an inconvenience?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
If you will be subjecting the winch to harsh conditions, a better sealed unit is a better choice.
If you have no patience, a faster unit is a better choice, as is a higher duty cycle unit.
If you wheel where you can break down and not be in trouble (most off road parks, etc...), a cheap unit will not result in zombies eating your brains, in of itself.
If you wheel where getting stuck might mean being stranded without your insulin or enough ammo to handle the incoming brain drainers, well, a more reliable winch might be the better choice.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, sure a HF winch and a warn might do the same thing, just like a 4wd Volkswagon Vanagon and a Jeep do the same thing.
And sure, the Vanagon saves a lot of money, and there are people who have had Vanagon's last forever and be quite reliable....and there are people who have had jeeps that never worked right from the factory.
At Paragon, I saw a Vanagon recover a stuck wrangler...with its warn winch mounted to the front bumper....because the wrangler's no-name winch had burned up.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
So the bottom line is that if you have a lot of patience, and follow the duty cycle requirements, you can use a cheap winch for many years, and be happy with your time lost/money saved equation.
If you are poor enough that its NO winch, or a cheap winch, well, its better to at least have a CHANCE of recovery, than none...so the cheap winch can be the ONLY option.
If you don't do critical recoveries, you wheel in parks with people able to help you, etc...a broken cheap winch is an inconvenience, not a disaster.
If where you wheel, its clean and dry, well, the quality of the seals, etc, is less critical, and a cheaper winch can be less of a liability.
------------------------------
If you want a fast winch that will haul further and harder, and is better sealed, and you wheel where you can get in real trouble if you get completely stuck, well, the better winches are then worth it.
------------------------------
IE: There is no wrong answer, as long as you ask the right questions.
1) Duty Cycle
2) Speed UNDER LOAD
3) Capacity at distance
4) Water/weather resistance
5) Your patience
6) Critical Mission Situation
--------------------------------------------------
If you read your manual for the cheap winches with permanent magnets, etc....the duty cycle is very limiting.
You may have a limit of 3 minutes of pulling before needing to allow it to cool for 9 minutes, etc.
You also might be only able to pull at about 3' per minute under load.
So, 3 minutes of pulling, pulls you a grand total of 9', then you cool off another 9 minutes....
and pull another 9' for 3 more minutes, rinse, repeat....
That's agonizing.
The better winches, series wound motors, better heat sinks and cooling, etc...help to raise the duty cycle, and allow less cooling off between pulls.
The better winches are faster under load, so you also don't NEED to pull as long to do the recovery.
The better winches are sealed better, so they last longer under adverse conditions.
The better winches do not lose as much speed under load.
The better winches do not lose as much load capacity with wraps.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, if you are choosing a winch, you need to think about the above to narrow the selection process.
The other things are related to YOU, not the winch per se....
How much patience do you have? Are you going to really let the winch cool of as required to honor the warranty/prevent it from prematurely burning out, etc? - Or are you going to crank the sumna beetch to death to get the hell out of the mud hole faster w/o worrying about it?
Do you wheel in adverse conditions, like swamps and jungles, live in a high humidity area, subject your winch/truck to slurries of acidic sand (Like in the Pine Barrens, etc...)?
If the winch were to break down, is it a critical situation? Are you now stranded in the boonies, with zombies mere minutes away, and your legs broken? Do you have cell phone reception? Do people know where you are/able to reach you?
IE: how bad IS IT if the winch doesn't work, a real problem, or an inconvenience?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
If you will be subjecting the winch to harsh conditions, a better sealed unit is a better choice.
If you have no patience, a faster unit is a better choice, as is a higher duty cycle unit.
If you wheel where you can break down and not be in trouble (most off road parks, etc...), a cheap unit will not result in zombies eating your brains, in of itself.
If you wheel where getting stuck might mean being stranded without your insulin or enough ammo to handle the incoming brain drainers, well, a more reliable winch might be the better choice.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So, sure a HF winch and a warn might do the same thing, just like a 4wd Volkswagon Vanagon and a Jeep do the same thing.
And sure, the Vanagon saves a lot of money, and there are people who have had Vanagon's last forever and be quite reliable....and there are people who have had jeeps that never worked right from the factory.
At Paragon, I saw a Vanagon recover a stuck wrangler...with its warn winch mounted to the front bumper....because the wrangler's no-name winch had burned up.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
So the bottom line is that if you have a lot of patience, and follow the duty cycle requirements, you can use a cheap winch for many years, and be happy with your time lost/money saved equation.
If you are poor enough that its NO winch, or a cheap winch, well, its better to at least have a CHANCE of recovery, than none...so the cheap winch can be the ONLY option.
If you don't do critical recoveries, you wheel in parks with people able to help you, etc...a broken cheap winch is an inconvenience, not a disaster.
If where you wheel, its clean and dry, well, the quality of the seals, etc, is less critical, and a cheaper winch can be less of a liability.
------------------------------
If you want a fast winch that will haul further and harder, and is better sealed, and you wheel where you can get in real trouble if you get completely stuck, well, the better winches are then worth it.
------------------------------
IE: There is no wrong answer, as long as you ask the right questions.
04-21-2012, 10:26 PM
#32
JK Enthusiast
Join Date: Apr 2012
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I am an American and believe in spending my money where I make it. I am a firm believer in helping out my fellow Americans so if I have to pay an extra $400 to help feed my neighbors family, g*d*****t I will! American products for life! Help your neighbor and fellow Jeepsters out!
04-21-2012, 11:58 PM
#33
I am an American and believe in spending my money where I make it. I am a firm believer in helping out my fellow Americans so if I have to pay an extra $400 to help feed my neighbors family, g*d*****t I will! American products for life! Help your neighbor and fellow Jeepsters out!
Seems like very little is made here anymore. Buy American, but stop passing laws that force our companies out of business.
04-22-2012, 12:54 AM
#34
Wow did this thread go bad quick. Yikes.
Anyway, I had a great discussion about winches with a woman who has been using them often and for a long time. She owns a jeep rental and has been wheeling for decades. She basically grew up on Warn and still stands behind them for what they are but has since been a Superwinch convert. Now we are talking about a lot of money and most of us won't be using them on a regular basis but if your argument is to buy the best then it's gonna cost you.
The Superwinch had a couple nicer features but the main point was that with a synthetic line the drum on a Warn winch would bend and fail before the line would snap. This was why they kept a wire rope on their heavy duty winch. It doesn't mean the winch wouldn't pull what it was rated for plus some but if you took it to the limit of the rope you could bend your drum.
That said, there are much cheaper options that will accommodate the needs of most recreational wheelers and in a more difficult situation, a snatch block will double the load and you can add straps if you need more distance to the anchor point. For the few times you will have a hard pull most of us will forgive the extra time to save a couple hundred cash.
As for the buy American rant, I am against the principal of buying American just because it is American because it horrible for business. Our companies need to get my business because they make a superior product not because they slap a flag on it. If the American version of something is crap but a foreign made version is better I will buy the better product. If I were to buy the crap product it just tells that company not to worry about a quality product because we will by it anyway. This was how the US auto industry got so far behind Japan for decades. In this instance there are American winches that are far superior so the choice is easy. Most equipment where safety is involved, government regulation ensures a superior product.
By the way, if your shackles have China stamped on them cut them up with a cutting wheel and throw them out. The weight rating doesn't mean anything more than a guess since Chinese steel has no real consistency standards. I lectured her about having d-rings with China stamps but they came with the ORF bumper. That disappointed me. She was trying to use her Crosby's but they were a hair small so I gave her a pass.
As far as the air goes, I don't have a lot of experience but I did get to use the portable ARB kit and it was the bomb. It had its own plastic tool box and when it came time to air up you pop it open and hook up the clamps to your battery. I assumed on board was the way to go but if there are guys with you that don't have air you can easily pass it around. I also liked the straight hose instead of the stiff coil hose most have.
To the Harbor Freight issue, they sell cheap stuff cheaply. If you need winch now but can't afford a good winch buy theirs. You really get what you pay for. To me I would worry every time I needed to use it that it would fail.
Anyway, I had a great discussion about winches with a woman who has been using them often and for a long time. She owns a jeep rental and has been wheeling for decades. She basically grew up on Warn and still stands behind them for what they are but has since been a Superwinch convert. Now we are talking about a lot of money and most of us won't be using them on a regular basis but if your argument is to buy the best then it's gonna cost you.
The Superwinch had a couple nicer features but the main point was that with a synthetic line the drum on a Warn winch would bend and fail before the line would snap. This was why they kept a wire rope on their heavy duty winch. It doesn't mean the winch wouldn't pull what it was rated for plus some but if you took it to the limit of the rope you could bend your drum.
That said, there are much cheaper options that will accommodate the needs of most recreational wheelers and in a more difficult situation, a snatch block will double the load and you can add straps if you need more distance to the anchor point. For the few times you will have a hard pull most of us will forgive the extra time to save a couple hundred cash.
As for the buy American rant, I am against the principal of buying American just because it is American because it horrible for business. Our companies need to get my business because they make a superior product not because they slap a flag on it. If the American version of something is crap but a foreign made version is better I will buy the better product. If I were to buy the crap product it just tells that company not to worry about a quality product because we will by it anyway. This was how the US auto industry got so far behind Japan for decades. In this instance there are American winches that are far superior so the choice is easy. Most equipment where safety is involved, government regulation ensures a superior product.
By the way, if your shackles have China stamped on them cut them up with a cutting wheel and throw them out. The weight rating doesn't mean anything more than a guess since Chinese steel has no real consistency standards. I lectured her about having d-rings with China stamps but they came with the ORF bumper. That disappointed me. She was trying to use her Crosby's but they were a hair small so I gave her a pass.
As far as the air goes, I don't have a lot of experience but I did get to use the portable ARB kit and it was the bomb. It had its own plastic tool box and when it came time to air up you pop it open and hook up the clamps to your battery. I assumed on board was the way to go but if there are guys with you that don't have air you can easily pass it around. I also liked the straight hose instead of the stiff coil hose most have.
To the Harbor Freight issue, they sell cheap stuff cheaply. If you need winch now but can't afford a good winch buy theirs. You really get what you pay for. To me I would worry every time I needed to use it that it would fail.
Last edited by keithvegas; 04-22-2012 at 01:27 AM.
04-22-2012, 11:43 AM
#35
JK Enthusiast
Join Date: Jan 2011
Location: Salt Lake City
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Let us know how you like it!
Just food for thought about the Warn argument. What winch brand is probably the most used? Warn, right? So with that being said there are a lot more of them on the trails. A lot more on the trails then will equate to stories about failure. You don't hear about HF winches failing, because the reality is not a lot of people run them so your way less likely to hear anything about them.
You might know people that are like yourself that haven't had any problems with the HF, but how many people running Warns have the same positive experience with their winches?
Just my 2 cents and more fuel for your fire. LOL
Just food for thought about the Warn argument. What winch brand is probably the most used? Warn, right? So with that being said there are a lot more of them on the trails. A lot more on the trails then will equate to stories about failure. You don't hear about HF winches failing, because the reality is not a lot of people run them so your way less likely to hear anything about them.
You might know people that are like yourself that haven't had any problems with the HF, but how many people running Warns have the same positive experience with their winches?
Just my 2 cents and more fuel for your fire. LOL