With lighter loads you should be ok. Monitor the temperature by touching your hand to the motor side of it.

You may also want to consider looking at Smittybilt winches. They are way less expensive than Warn and Superwinch and most have a lifetime warranty. I didn't look up the winch your are referring to or compare the prices, but it's something to consider. I have stressed the snot out of the 8K SB winch on my Jeep to the point of it getting hot and stalling and after cooling off it still works fine. I get a bit of flack from the Warn, Smittybilt, and Milemarker guys that I Jeep with, but it's never left me stranded while dragging my Jeep up a rock face.

 

why do you need a winch to drag stuff around with your truck.....whats wrong with using a chain attached to your tow hooks or a hitch.

winches are cool if your stuck in the woods and need to pull yourself out of a mud hole , etc.

 

It is often much more convenient to drag something with a winch in a spot where you may be able to get your truck in there, but may not have room to move the truck in the direction of the pull. A winch is also more controllable than using your truck. you can also pull out exactly the amount of cable you need and not have to worry about using fancy knots to adjust the length of your pull rope or cable. Then there is the safety factor because when using your winch you are outside the truck and can observe what is happening much better. I also would not want to try to redirect a pull with a truck and rope using a light to medium duty ****** block set up like you can with a winch (again, safety reasons). A utility winch can be a very useful tool for someone who has a need for it.

 

I have done that many times and likely still will when I can. But dragging your truck all over a clients lawn and leaving huge ruts is also a pain. I've thought of the winch as a dual purpose use on my truck and trailer.

When I've done many landscape redo's I'll just rent a mini excavator with a thumb and pop the bushes right out.

I've also done jobs where I've dug up huge root ***** by hand and nearly break myself lifting it into the trailer. I figure I can weld a 2" bumper mount receiver and use a receiver mount to use the winch to drag things up. I don't have the $$$ to own a skid steer type machine yet.

I've also buried machines in mud where a winch could've helped a ton in getting it unstuck.

Why do guys want shiny big rims and tires when the stock ones are just fine?......

 

Smitty looks to be twice the price for the rating. To go up to that price I would just buy the HF 18,000lb.

If anyone has forgotten, this could likely be something that has minimal investment of my own money.

 

My apologies, like I said I didn't look up the winch you are referring to and do a price comparo, that is why I only suggested looking into it (re: price checking).

I'm sure you will be fine with the HF winch for what you are looking to do as long as you remember what you have and don't over heat it. It may not even cost much to add something like a 2 year replacement warranty from HF when you buy it.

I will say that I recommend against the use of a receiver mounted plate and using the winch from your truck receiver. Any side loading at all and you WILL bent the heck out of your hitch, especially the front receivers made for these winch plates. I have both seen it done and done it myself.

(IDK how in the heck the text in this post got turned red?!)

 

We use the tractor supply winches (Traveller) on all of our trucks at work. 15 ford rangers, 6 F150s and a couple of F250's. I think all of our tow trucks are running Ramsey winches (but those are big money).
The rangers and F150s have 8,000 or 9,000 lbs winches depending on when the winch was bought.
They hold up way better than I expected, and to be honest very few guys running them pay much attention to the duty rating. In fact I asked the guy that runs the class on extrication about the duty cycle on those winches and he couldn't tell me.

If you pay attention to the winch while you are using it and know what you're doing, it will preform fine. Just two weeks ago I used one of our 8,000 pound winches on a 1984 Cadillac with the rear brakes frozen up. Dragged it 15 feet before they broke free, then an additional 55 feet with the brakes still hanging up a bit. I only stopped to let it cool down when I had to re-position the truck and that was only for a minute or so. The motor on the winch was still cool to the touch.

 

I thought the same thing myself about the receivers. However for the main task I want to perform it would more than likely be straight line pulls. But your concerns are well noted for sure as I've tried to think how to set this up.

The receiver mount would be so that I could set it in the front of the trailer to pull things forward by welding one of those plate "hitches" to the floor/front wall of the trailer.

I'm not buying some $1500 bumper for this, for now. I'm not off-roading in my dually with street tires but all these ideas you're all giving are well noted.

My concern is less about fudging up a $170 front receiver (those can be replaced) but will that front receiver bend/twist enough to bugger up the front frame rails should a pull be great.

 

Your red text is warning me. Ha!

 

I did the same thing years ago with a Ramsey winch. I had front and rear receivers on my truck and a piece of receiver tube welded to the deck of my trailer. Worked great for a little over a year. And then I side loaded it and twisted the front receiver. And it actually did bend one of the frame horns. But, I blame this directly on my own stupid self. But, the truck was bogged down in a bad spot and I willingly took the risk. If you can be careful to pull in a relatively straight line it will be fine. I was just letting you know that their warnings about straight line pulls with receiver mounted winches are not a "just incase to CYA" type caution. I also saw a friend with a similar set up on a light weight Wrangle for recovery (front and rear receivers) bend the rear hitch assembly doing the same stupid thing. I would NEVER tell someone to use a receiver mounted winch if the primary purpose was to be self recovery, because sometimes you just can't get a straight pull angle in recovery situations.

With what you are doing if you keep your head on straight and pay attention and be smart and be careful you should be fine. I just wanted to help you keep your eyes open and know what you are going to need to pay attention to. Overloading or improperly using (side loading etc.) a winch and / or mount can cause some pretty serious vehicle damage, and /or injury, or even kill someone. Be smart, pay attention, and play it safe and the set up you are talking about should serve you just fine.

 

The duty cycle would actually go up exponentially as load and current go down. The heat generated is equal to current squared times resistance. At half the current, a quarter of the heat is generated.

 

Much appreciated!

 

MDSuperDuty...

I understand what you are trying to do, which is to not dump a ton of money on a seldom used convenience by dividing the dollar spent by the number of uses, to arrive at a justifiable number for the cost of the winch.

All of these cheap Chinese winches (Badlands, Traveller, etc) didn't exist 30 years ago when the only choices were Warn, Ramsey, MileMarker, and SuperWinch.

And that is something to consider. I'll bet you are already considering it, otherwise you'd have bought your HF already and not even bothered to ask around.

I can't tell you if the BadLand's winch will last for your limited usage, because I don't have one. And I wouldn't buy one, not as long as Warn keeps making at least a few of their winches in the good 'ol USA, in Oregon.

But to be perfectly honest, my choice isn't only about American Pride and Patriotism, nor is it only about helping to keep my neighbors employed so they don't turn to crime to survive. It is also about my personal safety. Even a 2,500 lb load can lead to serious injury if something went wrong.

Warn has been in the winch building business for nearly 70 years. How long has that unknown, unnamed, unseen factory in China been building these cheap Harbor Freight winches? 5 years? And who are they?

I don't know about the Chinese winches, but I've given a few Chinese wrenches a try. CRACK! I didn't know metal wrenches could crack like the handle of a ceramic china tea cup until I used a few large wrenches made in China. There is a reason why they are cheap. And it isn't just the slave labor and human rights repression held over from the former Communist regime. It is the fact that they cut corners with cheap substandard materials.







So what is the quality of materials used to make the parts in this Badlands winch? I don't know. And that's the point. Since the people who make the winch already know that I don't know who they are, it doesn't matter to them. They don't have a name brand with a 70 year history to uphold. They have no accountability to me as a customer, because I'm not their customer. Harbor Freight is.

When I had a question about my Warn 15,000 lb winch that I bought 15 years ago, I contacted Warn and reached one of the design engineers. I pointed out a fitment issue with their hidden kit, and next thing I knew, UPS showed up with a new piece at my door, direct from Warn. It didn't matter who I bought the winch from. I was Warn's customer.

One of the cool things about being able to engage directly with a local manufacturer like Warn, who not only speaks English, but even more importantly speaks the languages of Expertise, Experience, and Excellence in the field of winching, is what I learn when I contact them with questions.

For example, when I bought the Warn 15K, it had just been introduced, and at the time it was their heaviest duty model. The 16.5K hadn't been invented yet, and the previous top of the heap was the 12K. I didn't want a gargantuan cow catching bumper either, so Warn's new Hidden Kit really appealed to me.

However, I had to wait a bit, because Warn had tested their 15K winch in their Hidden Kit for the Super Duty that was originally developed with the 12K winch. Warn found that the 15K winch was that much more powerful enough to stress the Hidden Kit beyond their standards of performance. So they upgraded and re manufactured the Hidden Kit using High Strength Low Alloy steel. Same dimensions, but higher quality material. After that, not only did the 15K model pass, but the same kit qualified for the then yet to be introduced 16.5K model as well. That was a fun fact to learn, allowing me to better understand and appreciate what cannot be seen with the eye.

When a winch is permanently mounted to the front of a truck, it is bound to get used for self recovery when desperate. Obviously, no one ever wants to be in a situation where desperate means are explored, but in the case of having a winch for preparedness, the rule of thumb is a rating of 1.5 times the weight of what is being recovered.

A good point was made earlier about true load being hard to measure, as it isn't just the weight of the vehicle, it is the level of resistance (stuck in the mud, for example). I used my winch to recover a classic 1959 Ford F-100 out of a boat ramp once. Water poured from the cab like a ship rising out of the water. Guilty party was a high school senior trying to launch his jet ski out of the bed of his father's cherished pickup that he did not have permission to drive! The truck itself probably only weighed 4K, but the resistance of all that water in front of the truck, and the weight of water inside the cab?





I never gave duty cycle a second thought. How do you think the kid would have reacted if within less than 3/4 of a minute of starting the recovery of his truck from underwater, I said Uh, we're going to have to wait here for 15 minutes now, because of the duty cycle of my winch?

I don't want to have to wonder if my winch will do the job, or will snap like that Chinese wrench from substandard, unknown, and indeed unknowable materials.





Above and below: Harbor Fright Badlands winch drum broke apart





I very seldom need a 1 1/16" size wrench, but when I do, the last thing I need is a broken arm due to a cheap material wrench that snaps without warning. Who cares if HF will replace it? Will HF pay my medical bills also? Will they pay for a broken windshield with their winch snaps?

Yes, the USA made 1 1/16" wrench I have now cost 4 times more, but the true losses from say, a broken hand, far exceeds any piddly savings from a more favorable dollars per use ratio, even on a seldom used tool. I seldom use my winch, but I'm glad I went Warn from the beginning. It has held up outside 24/7 for 15 years, and I have every confidence that it will last for the remaining 20 years before I'll be too old to use it anymore.

And that is part of what I paid for... Confidence. In the values of the company who made it, in their interest in upholding a 67 year old brand, in the quality of the materials, in the access to their engineering staff and expertise, in the workmanship of properly paid people working in my own economy.

I have an American made Warn winch in front of my truck, and even though it is completely hidden from view, I know it's there, ready without waiting... providing both pride and preparedness in one full pull.

 

Well I do appreciate your sincere response I'm not spending ~$1600 for something I may decide I do not need.

I know their quality is better, I believe it. I've broken the expensive hand tools and even had a few that just stopped working.

If you can show me failures resulting is death or dismemberment from these off brand products I'd be happy to read them. The things I have read basically state how they have stopped working or malfunctioned in some way that just rendered them useless. Maybe I'll be the the unfortunate soul. I stand the maximum my cord will let me while dumping my dump trailer. Why?

Because ***** happens

Again, I appreciate your response but $1,600 is not happening. I could buy so many more useful pieces of equipment for my business than drop that on a winch that may not work out.

 

Just right for a tow truck driver that gets paid by the hour, lots of time waiting.