so after the last flood we had in which abandon vehicles blocked a lot of the secondary roads I decided to get a winch. during the last floo I used a 25ft chain to drag cars out of my way but think a cable winch would allow me from being further away from the the danger zone of other cars drifting in while I clear already stuck cars.


so the bang for the buck and high reviews seem to be either a 9K or 12K harbor freight winch,


I have a front hitch and rear hitch installed and imagine most of the time the winch would be in my truck bed tool box till I need it.


any other recommendations...don't need a 1000 dollar hitch and will rarely use it beyond what I described .


I think the winch is a must have since during the last flood, if we did not drag stuck cars out of the way, we would have not been able to get out of the flood zone.

 

You get what you pay for.

 

I am a big fan of Harbor Freight. I bought my sandblast cabinet, my parts washer, several air tools, and lots of hand tools from there. Anything that I'm not betting my life on, from either a reliability or safety standpoint, I'll consider HF.


That said, there is NO WAY I would buy a winch from HF, particularly one that large, hooked to a Super Duty, and particularly if I considered it essential equipment for survival purposes.

Beyond the risk of it just not working for you, winches are incredibly dangerous in event of a catastrophic failure. I've seen what a broken winch cable can do, and I would never take a chance of violently releasing that much energy because I bought bargain equipment.

 

When I was thinking about getting a winch bumper I looked all over the interweb and there is a lot of reviews about the badlands winches. I didn't find any bad ones, id still get the extended warranty

galaxy S4 using IB AutoGroup

 

I am in Ship Repair. We have a saying about Harbor Freight. Buy any tool or thing they have as long as it does not have a moving part. I.E. 9/16 socket- Good. 3/8 drive rachet- Bad

 

Off road magazine did a long term test on a 12k LB harbor freight winch. They had it on a 6.0 super duty. They went rock climbing, it worked. They burried the truck to the doors in thick mud, it pulled it out. They performed several recoveries on other vehicles. It worked.

Over all they said they were very impressed and would put it on anything.

So it's a good winch, just comes from a bad place....

 

I have an inexpensive winch on my 4 wheeler. It over heats and shuts down regularly when I need it. Luckily I can usually just lift the 4 wheeler out of what I'm in. The is no way I would even consider putting an inexpensive winch on my truck. If I need it on the truck, there will be no lifting it out if it when the winch doesn't perform.

Ryan

 

We just put a 12k harbor freight winch on my friends lifted 6.0...plenty of reviews and articles about them out there and nothing bad so he went for it. Works just fine...no sense in spending $1000+ on a winch unless youre using it everyday

 

I've heard nothing but good things about the HF winches. I would seal it with since silicon perhaps but other than that they seem to always work.

A little slow perhaps, but reliable.

 

I've also read that they aren't too bad. You might check out the jeepforum.com (or other various 4x4 forums) and search for HF winches to see what others have said. I know a Jeep doesn't weigh as much as an F350 but you at least get info on how reliable they are from real world use.

 

I have the 12K HF model mounted to the front of my 1995 F250. It has performed flawlessly since I bought it nine months ago. I bought the winch mounting plate separately from Amazon and a Curt front mount receiver from eTrailer. It's a great combination. The manual will explain the basics of pulling with a winch, but it's best to read more in depth about the subject. The simple act of pulling another vehicle out of a ditch while your truck is in park or gear may do tremendous damage to your drive train. Placing a blanket or tarp over the cable while pulling will reduce the backlash in the event of a cable break. A ****** block will also come in handy and allow you more flexibility with the winch and it's pulling capacity.

 

I would recommend to anyone getting synthetic cable for any winch. They are stronger than steel cable don't Frey and if you can break them they supposedly fall to the ground without the damage caused by steel cables. A good friend has a HF winch on his quad he plows and does light recovery with it when the others get stuck. It has always worked without fail.

 

one thing to point out tho is that this can happen with ANY winch or winch cable, so stating this as a reason NOT to buy one is ludicris.

I have spent a lot of money at HF and have never had any problems with anything I have purchased there (have a 4" grinder that I got over 10 years ago that is still going strong).

 

Nice job of selective editing. You left out my whole first paragraph, which said, "I am a big fan of Harbor Freight. I bought my sandblast cabinet, my parts washer, several air tools, and lots of hand tools from there. Anything that I'm not betting my life on, from either a reliability or safety standpoint, I'll consider HF."


Of course it can happen with any winch; the strongly implied point was that HF has quality problems--a point that although not stated, was evident enough to you that you felt the need to give your own personal testimony.


Although it appears based on others' comments that HF might actually have a reliable manufacturer building these winches, and that they have not had the quality issues typically associated with HF, one can generally expect HF products to be made to a lesser standard than comparable name brand tool companies.


My first compressor came from HF. It would never shut off. Took it back (one good thing about them, they have a very liberal return policy), and got a replacement. It failed on me too, in 2 weeks. Got my money back and bought an IR. I had a HF pickle fork split in half on me--Chinese pot metal. My first air tool set was from HF. Some of the tools are still working today, more than 10 years later. Do I rely on them? Nope. The ones I need to know are going to work on demand are all first-quality. I've seen, both from HF as well as from several other sources, the issues with product quality coming from Chinese suppliers who do not generally have sufficient quality control and assurance processes in place. I personally would not trust their winch cables, or their bearings and other load-bearing parts that are going to be under high stress during a vehicle extraction operation. There's just a wee bit more risk involved there than having your 4" grinder fail. And it has nothing to do with rap music.

 

I'm pretty sure a good many of the lower priced model name brand winches are made at the same noodle, iPhone and winch factory in China anyway and just get a brand name label and higher price.

Unless you are buying a commercial grade hydraulic powered winch as used on a tow truck you're probably looking at China products. That said, they do build some pretty high quality sutff in China these days so you can get good deals you just have to inspect the individual items carefully yourself before buying.