Bought myself a Harbor Freight Winch...

[sonoranfun]

Yes that's right, and not even a nice one, I bought the 2,000 pound $49 deal.. I hear people bashing their winches all the time so I figured I'd start with this one. I intend to use it on the front of my FJ40 to 1) Pull things onto a trailer and 2) lift the roof on and off..

The kicker for me was $9.99 for a two year warranty, for the price I know for $59 I have a winch for two years. I don't really even need one so anything it does past lifting a hardtop I'll be impressed!

 

[MrMoMo]

I had one of those on my ATV, It couldn't pull it on the flat. But hey, if you are just lifting a hard top....

 

[tltaylor22]

I beleive the 2000 lb rating is double lined. We have gone through a half dozen of them at work for different lifting projects. They seem to do all right, but the switches go out alot. $10 for the warrenty is great, but I've stood there for an hour waiting for them to get the OK from the offsight warrenty company. Thats after I called and gave them all the info before I went in.

 

[sonoranfun]

I beleive the 2000 lb rating is double lined. We have gone through a half dozen of them at work for different lifting projects. They seem to do all right, but the switches go out alot. $10 for the warrenty is great, but I've stood there for an hour waiting for them to get the OK from the offsight warrenty company. Thats after I called and gave them all the info before I went in.

Yeah well I don't get the wait, Harbor Freight clearly hires only the smartest of the smart people, all with PHD's if I'm not mistaken.. Anyway, I don't expect a ton but I did see a guy pull a car onto a trailer with one and I was honestly extreemly impressed with the job it did... So we'll see, I didn't wanna spend double the funds on the 3,000 lbs unit as I expect it to break often.

 

[JJS]

a friend of mine has ran an 8k chicago electric winch for a couple years now. he did a few things to hop it up, but it's served him well.

 

[HeavyLift]

hey good deal...i was just at Harbor Frieght...hehe they rock.

 

[HawkDriver]

Yeh they got good cheap tools but some of it is crap. It's a great store though.

So you're going to have it permanently attached to your rig? Dude you've got to post up a pic of that. It's just funny.

 

[sonoranfun]

Yeah I'm going to weld up a quick little bracket for the front and put it on there just like a winch. I don't really use or have a need for a winch, in fact in AZ there's little to really hook onto. I think the only time I would put it to any use is in pulling me sideways. So with that said I figured before spending $299 on a crap winch I'll drop $49 and see how it goes. Either it will do what I want on my FJ or I'll weld it to the roof of my shop and use it as a boom or something, I know I can get my use out iit someplace..

As a side note, I wonder what I can replace the cable with? I just don't like the idea of that cheap cable snapping on me. Is there a nice rope I can use that would do the job?

 

[rusty_tlc]

Yeah I'm going to weld up a quick little bracket for the front and put it on there just like a winch. I don't really use or have a need for a winch, in fact in AZ there's little to really hook onto. I think the only time I would put it to any use is in pulling me sideways. So with that said I figured before spending $299 on a crap winch I'll drop $49 and see how it goes. Either it will do what I want on my FJ or I'll weld it to the roof of my shop and use it as a boom or something, I know I can get my use out iit someplace..

As a side note, I wonder what I can replace the cable with? I just don't like the idea of that cheap cable snapping on me. Is there a nice rope I can use that would do the job?

You could go synthetic, but you would probably spend more to spool it up than the winch cost.

 

[e9999]

HF has a sale on a 10K winch for $399 IIRC. Probably permanent magnet, though.

 

[FoYoChe]

My friend bought a milemarker #8000lb winch, and then went to harbor freight and found the same winch for 150 less, the harbor freight ones may be the quality check rejects from milemarker, but they might be worth a shot.

 

[sonoranfun]

I'll get a picture up of this thing mounted but I can tell you what the worth of this thing is at this point.. Let me first say I had the smallest little spot on the front of my FJ so I thought it would just be cute to let this thing sit up there like a real winch. I basicly just ran a beed down two side on 5/8th stock for a bracket and bolted the winch right to the front. So then I set out to see what it couldn't do. I have a hill in the yard maybe 4 feet at 35% or so. I figured it could do this no trouble! HA! Didn't even come close and kinked up the cable and all just trying..

So I got like 500 feet of air force surplus cable. I went ahead and spooled like 25 feet of that in instead of the 50 feet of whatever they had. I then wrapped it around two RR ties and had my pops stand on that, so maybe 500 pounds.. It did that without any trouble...

So I'm just trying to think of uses for this thing at this point. Only thing I came up with was pulling me a little to the side.. Can anybody else think of a situation where having a 2,000 winch on the front of my rig will do me any good? I'd like to use it enough to break it and get a new one...

 

[sonoranfun]