Has anyone done this? What do you all think? Cut the center out of a smaller steel wheel rim. Then weld it to the side of my front truck rim. Fasten a cable inside it then wrap the cable around it. Anchor it to a tree and put the truck in gear to pull it self out. Of course you can't drive around with cable wraped around it so the cable would have to come off if driving. Perhaps mount it on studs rather than welding it on would be better to allow for easy removal. Good cheep winch?

 

good idea, but probably a good way to break ujoints or axleshafts.

 

You also have to make sure that whatever you're winching off of is directly in front of or directly behind you. Anything even slightly off to the side will pop the cable over the side of the rim and probably make for quite a mess. If you're doing this with your front axle I anticipate you'll run into problems with snapping shafts like Bremen mentioned. I also don't like the idea of that much pull on just one wheel of your rig. If you're stuck good you really need to be pulling from the frame.

 

I think I seen something like that in Fourwheeler magazine many years ago. It was a big flop. Like Ivan was saying, you 'd be very limited to what you could do with it.

 

Hummers in the army have this kind of set up on them. I dont like it though.

 

got any pics of this? never seen anything like that.

 

Underground power companies use this technique to pull cable through conduit. The feed it through using a backhoe with one of these "winch mounted on your wheel" thingies.

 

my father had this exact setup on every one of the trucks, and a setup for all the tractors back when i was a kid on the farm.it worked pretty good as long as your anchor was directly behind or in front of you. we only had 2 wheel drives, so it was hooked on the rear and was plenty strong. also, we used rope instead of cable.

 

that musta been one heck of a rope to hold up to that kind of abuse.

 

You would be surprised at what you can do with a 3/4 inch manila line ....

 

yeah, probly alot more than you would think, we pulled a freinds nissan truck out of a mud whole with a 50 foot peice of boat tie rope doubled up.

 

We use a simlar idea, only mount a smal car wheel to a hydraulic motor on the front of a tractor with a front end loader on it and use it to clean up barbed wire fences.

 

here is a pic of the hummer wheel

 

I imagine it would be pretty tough onthe steering components. Probably the suspension as well. I suppose in a bind, it's better than nothing though.

K.

 

hmmm....maybe I'm missing something, but that tire pic only appears to have a pulley attached to the rim center. I don't see anything on it that would provide the capability that Claytonk described. That pulley in the middle of the rim looks like it might be able to withstand a winch cable, but it only looks like a static pulley; a place to thread some winch cable for temporary movement. It does not look like it has the capability to spool any amount of cable onto it.

Hey Claytonk, I would not trust a setup like what you described. It's physics and dynamics that allows the winches to work properly. If you think about it, you will almost always see a winch mounted in the front or rear center of a vehicle frame. The keywords there are center and frame. That way in most cases the vehicle center of gravity weight can be applied to the winch through the strength of the frame. If you have that improvised winch on the wheel, you have now lost the strength of the frame support for the winch cable spool. You would put the strain on the axle and suspension parts on that corner of the vehicle, just as the others have said. The strain might not just be the weight of the vehicle, in tons, but also, if it's stuck in the mud or pinned against trees or boulders on unlevel ground then that is just more strain you will be putting on that corner of the vehicles suspension and axle.

I'm not saying it's not going to work, but I would not trust that idea in real world 4x trails. If you're on the farm with an old beater truck then it would be a fun experiment.