Anyone have experiances with winches? I am looking to outfit my 2000 F-150 with a mobile mount. I've been looking at Ramsey, Warn and Super Winch. All seem to offer very nice product. But my GVWR is 6500lbs which (from what I understand) requires about a 9,750 lbs. of winch.

Anyone have a winch they like? Or maybe one to stay away from?
If you have one would you go the mobile route, or would you permenantly mount it?

Thanks for the input.

Covert Ops
:7

 

for my truck im gettin the warn HS9500i, its a great winch. superwinch winches are no good. i have found the cheapest price for winches at carparts.com of all places, go figure. im also gettin an 8000 warn for the back. the reason im not gettin a multi mounts is because i like the wich mount bumpers and i wont want to have to get out and hook up a winch all the time, but for the rear im puttin that on a multi mount so i can take it out of the receiver when i dont need it.

 

I have looked into this and what I would do is instead of getting a bumper to mount the winch on I am going to get a front reciever hitch and mount the winch on a plate so I can just swap between back and forth and when I am not using it I can leave it in the garage. This way theres no chance of it getting stolen and most of the time you need to be winched out of where you came from not where your going.
Just my $0.02. Good Luck

 

Warn is the only way to go, and just FYI, your actual vehicle weight is closer to 4300#...everybody gets weight confused with GVWR, buts its always better to go with a bigger winch anyways.

 

I have a Ramsey REP 9000 and have no complaints so far. I have only had it for about 8 months, but it has worked flawlessly so far. I found mine on e-bay for $460 plus shipping. It was brand new in the box never used. You can find just about any brand on e-bay if you are patient. I bought a front reciever for my Bronco and fabbed a multi mount plate with handles to mount the winch on. I also used 2 gauge jumper cables to make quick connect plugs front, back, and under hood so it is ready to go very quickly. I don't go off road as much as some others guys on this board, but this set up works really good for me.

 

 

I think you'll find your best bang for the buck to be a Warn HS9500I. It will provide you the pulling power needed, is very fast and reliable.

As for the other brands, well take a look at http://home.gci.net/~bronco78/winch/winches.htm

And you can compare them.. I can tell you myself and many others have not had good luck with Super Winch, or Ramsey. They seem to do ok, in very light duty use, but once you start using them hard, they do not last. Warn has some company problems.. Building a great product is not one of them.

 

One rec I have is watch for the motor's rated hp. I have a Ramsey 9500 and when I bought it the orginal motor was rated at 1.8hp. After burning up three of these under warranty Ramsey sent me out the new 4.8 hp motor. This has been 3 years ago now and it's still pulling strong. Seems that the rule of thumb is you need atleast 1 hp for every 2,000lbs of dead pull. Also get an ****** block for those times when you're realy stuck. You'll thank your stars for it when you need it.

 

I heard that if you have a Warn winch on a Warn reciever mount, and you put it in the back reciever and open the tailgate the the winch hits the tailgate and leaves a big dent in it. I'm getting a megawinch. They look and sound like they are good. I herd they are way better then Warn. The enginer that made them said that Warns are crap and people are just buying the name.

 

Go with a warn 9500i. Awesome winch and will work well with your truck. And about multi mount. its a good idea since when you get stuck you were usually trying to get somewhere and you probably still want to get there...so you can winch forward, but i wish i had had a rear winch last weekend when the rear axle of my truck was hanging off the ground. It would have been nice to get it back in contact with the ground.

Ryan

 

My rule of thumb is to take the weight of your truck fully loaded, then double it to overcome what ever stuck you, and thats the size winch you need.

I am using the HS9500i. It is fast. I would stay away from PTO winches. They require the engine to be running to use it. I can see the possibility of having to recover my own vehicle without a running engine.

I chose not to use a muli-mount. I figure I can still use a come-along to get out backwards if nobody can pull. First, to make sure the winch is accessible, you need to have it nounted in the bed, because otherwise you could burry it in mud either in front or back making it very difficult to get to when you decide to go the other way. Milti-mounts also decrease your approach and departure angles. Make a mount in the bed and it should work fine for you no matter what kind of stuck you got yourself into.


Silly rabbit. Jeeps are for chicks!!
"If you're not getting stuck, you're not trying"
76 F100

 

I like the quote... Silly rabbit, Jeeps are for Chicks.