• RME Gear & Apparel

which winch for a guy who doesn't like winches?

sixstringsteve

sixstringsteve

Well-Known Member
Location
UT
I ended up buying my first winch today: a Smittybilt X20 8 Comp. 8000 lb winch, synthetic line, and IP68 rating (more water resistant than most winches). Since I've gone 8 years without a winch, I don't know if I can justify a more expensive winch. I imagine I may use it once or twice a year.

Would I love a WARN Zeon? Absolutely. But it's double the price of this winch and the Smittys seem to be stepping up their quality. I'll keep posting back once I have some real use under my belt.
 
TJDukit

TJDukit

I.Y.A.A.Y.A.S.
Location
Clearfield
I'm betting that winch will do just fine for you Steve. The only reason I actually have a Warn is because I didn't actually have to pay for it. If I had to buy one I probably would have gone Smittybilt or one of the other cheaper routes.

I've only used mine a handful of times and never to pull myself out of anything, it's always somebody else that needs the rescue. Only those XJ and TJ guys.
 
mombobuggy

mombobuggy

Well-Known Member
Location
Highland
I think my only regret about my warn 9.5 is that it is not the 12000lb model when I do get into trouble my winch stalls out pretty easily, Find that my snatch block is a must have annoyance it would be nice to pull on a single line and avoid dragging out every strap and piece of recovery gear I carry to rig the doubler. when I first got my winch I had some buyers remorse. But now after having it for fifteen years with no issues the cable is badly worn and it still works like new it really does not owe me anything sure its been used as to help others as much as myself but that feels good to help someone in a bind get upright safely without doing further damage. Rear mounted winces looked like overkill to me until I saw people dragging the rear of jeeps side ways to avoid drive line eating rocks this technique saved my drive line one day in peauto Oklahoma on the big meat run with john sumner and his gang all of which had front and rear winches sorry to name drop those rigs really impressed me. and they were very cool to go ridin with as they call four wheelin in the south. if someone is worried about looking like a mall crawler they could trade me thier new cable and fairlead for my well used stuff to get some street cred, just kidding. I dont call anybody a mall crawler unless they are running around on 40s with a dana 30 and 35.
 
mesha

mesha

By endurance we conquer
Location
A.F.
sixstringsteve said:
I ended up buying my first winch today: a Smittybilt X20 8 Comp. 8000 lb winch, synthetic line, and IP68 rating (more water resistant than most winches). Since I've gone 8 years without a winch, I don't know if I can justify a more expensive winch. I imagine I may use it once or twice a year.

Would I love a WARN Zeon? Absolutely. But it's double the price of this winch and the Smittys seem to be stepping up their quality. I'll keep posting back once I have some real use under my belt.
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congrats! that should work awesome.

500 bucks is a great price
 
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Maverick

Maverick

old-school
Location
Anywhere, thanks to my geeky droid
sixstringsteve said:
I ended up buying my first winch today: a Smittybilt X20 8 Comp. 8000 lb winch, synthetic line, and IP68 rating (more water resistant than most winches). Since I've gone 8 years without a winch, I don't know if I can justify a more expensive winch. I imagine I may use it once or twice a year.
Click to expand...

Congrats Steve. The M8000 has done a great job on my green thing, and on the previous brown version, including correcting my flop on Walker Hill. Helped us all out on Hanging Tree too (in that it got me up, then I pulled the other folks up). 'cept for a couple of the cool guys with stickies.
 
sixstringsteve

sixstringsteve

Well-Known Member
Location
UT
Maverick said:
Congrats Steve. The M8000 has done a great job on my green thing, and on the previous brown version, including correcting my flop on Walker Hill. Helped us all out on Hanging Tree too (in that it got me up, then I pulled the other folks up). 'cept for a couple of the cool guys with stickies.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I think it'll be a good thing to have. I'll also have my hand-winch for when things get really out of control.
 
Kiel

Kiel

Formerly WJ ZUK
just bought a warn vr 10,000 for 579.00, so cheap for a warn. Happy with the fit and quality so far. It weighs just over 80
 
S

STAG

Well-Known Member
Kiel said:
just bought a warn vr 10,000 for 579.00, so cheap for a warn. Happy with the fit and quality so far. It weighs just over 80
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Thats what I have. I bought it on sale though. Like a whopping $80 off if I recall
 
sixstringsteve

sixstringsteve

Well-Known Member
Location
UT
I only used my smitty x2o once but I really liked it. I liked knowing it was sealed from dust, dirt, sand, snow, and water. I'm sure there are better winches out there, but for the price I like these.
 
jeeper

jeeper

I live my life 1 dumpster at a time
Location
So Jo, Ut
Look what came in the mail today :D
Ive got it mounted on a hitch receiver so it can be used with each of my vehicles. In reality the main function of this winch will be to pull broken cars onto my trailer, help fall trees in the right direction, rescue the occasional stuck Toyota, etc.
I needed it to be universal in its vehicle application. The hitch mount should be great.

image.jpg

I mounted The control box on the side, which left about 10" of cable to reach a 3" section. I didn't like the wad of cable so I turned the box backwards and let the cables run under and around the winch housing to take up length.
image.jpg

My my next step is to figure out how to get power from any vehicle to the winch. I am thinking just some really long cables with a plug on the winch end and alligator clips at the battery end. Thoughts on that??
Where would some one get such long large cables? Use Welding leads?
 
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