Buying Winches... and general rant.

Anyone who's reading this blog could easily confuse this for some kind of home shopping network - all I seem to do is talk about products. I think this happens because I need to work through the reasoning myself, and this just happens to be a convenient way of thinking through ideas.

So, assuming the car we get doesn't have a winch (in a way I don't want a used one anyway), we'll need to buy one. OK, like everything, there is a plethora of choice when it comes to buying winches.

I'm an adamant believer in "you get what you pay for". One could argue that we always see what we expect to see, but I continually see people disappointed with having 'cheaped out' on cheap and nasty, single use products. I struggle with the 'cheaping out' approach on two levels. I resent the idea of using something once and then throwing it to landfill - regardless of the price. Secondly, "the poor man pays twice". I interpret this to say the man who buys a cheaper product needs to take it back for repairs at inconvenient times ultimately leading to more 'cost' than the higher single upfront purchase.

We continually see this with customers who buy cheap or used computers. "Why is it so slow"... er because you paid $400 for it. That's fine, they think they're winning, but they spend money on our time and a stick of memory, just to catch up with something even slightly more expensive. Not to mention their wasted time, stress and productivity. One could argue that they were sold something that didn't suite their needs, but when have you ever been encouraged to buy the cheaper product in any store - it's ultimately your cheap ass fault.

Only in my later years I've began to save money and buy once. The pressure to just 'buy a tool' to do a job once is overwhelming compared to spending 2-3 times the price on something that will last a life time. 80% of the time I execute my 'buy it once' mentality, and the other 20% of times I don't, I usually regret it.

So... this brings us to the topic at hand. Winches vary in price sooooo much.

The rule of thumb for working out an appropriate capacity winch is 1.5X the GVM of the vehicle.

The nominal weight for a diesel 78 series landcruiser is 2135KG. If we apply the magic rule, we should be looking for a winch with 3200KG of pulling capacity.

The max weight the vehicle could be is 3200KG or roughly 4800KG of winching capacity we should be looking for. I don't suspect we will be ever loaded up this much so hopefully we can round that down a bit.

Now, to make it interesting - and downright difficult to calculate, I'll quickly explain how the line pull figures are calculated. The basic idea behind the quoted 'line pull' capacities is how much weight the winch could lift vertically against gravity.

You might say, hey, if the car only weighs 3200KG max, then why would you need any more capacity than that?! Well - two reasons:

1) The max capacity specification is for a best case scenario ie. first layer of rope on the drum. The winch is strongest (and slowest) when it is nearly out of rope. Most the time this isn't the case - you would normally have 2 or 3 layers on the drum which may reduce capacity by a 1/3rd
2) The resistance provided by a deep bog hole or steep step is very high. In theory it would be easier to lift the car straight up out of a bog as opposed to dragging you through it.
This coupled with a slope and less than ideal battery conditions - you might find yourself out of capacity.
This site provides a calculation - but I must say is a bit too advanced for me: http://www.firstfour.co.uk/p0/choosing-your-winch/235982.htm

Now the good news is, all this evidence is based around a single line pull. You can use a pulley (or for some unknown reason people call them snatch blocks) to double the pulling capacity of a winch.
It's a great solution to reduce stress on the winch.
Please find below a picture of a 'snatch block'

You can see that she is setting up a double line pull

So, all the theory aside, it seems that the most appropriate winch for my needs is a 9,500lb winch (or 4300KG for us metric people) Perhaps it's even slightly more capacity than I need, but 'the poor man pays twice' remember.

Lets just put three contenders on the table.

The WARN 9500XP (9,500lb) is a quick, name brand model that has been around forever... costs ~$2500.

The Tigerz11 12,000lb winch - ebay special but comes with dynamica rope and wireless controller ~$850

TJM 9,500lb winch - meant to be pretty good ~$1000

Looking at the Tigerz11 winch (which I'm sure just was their eBay name that stuck) you can just see how cheap it is. The labels look like when they get wet the would peal off. If this is just the outside I can't help but assume the internals would also be rubbish.

I'm struggling to justify more than double the price... I'm not sure if I can. Is it a brand name? why are the Warn winches so much dearer? The sum of the discussion is, I won't know which one to get until I actually get the car because apparently they have different mounting patterns.