Pros and cons on Harbor Freight's 12,000 lbs Bad Land winch (1 Viewer)

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I need the material specs on Chinesium; I can't find it in my periodic table. Maybe it's a homebrew metal?

No, its there. Listed right underneath 'unobtanium'. ;)

All kidding aside...."Chinesium" = Any substandard metal for the purpose required. I.E. where the use of say 'Magnesium' would be appropriate/common....'pot metal' is used instead. And so forth.
 
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Luckily the FJ I was with had one, It was my first experience with the harbor freight winch and pulled me out just fine once we found a way to anchor his rig.
 
So, it sounds like the worst thing about this winch is that all your friends make fun of you for it when they see you at the mall.

For all the stigma against them, I use (and abuse) a HF welder, generator, impact wrench, and dozens of hand tools. None of those things have failed me yet. I bought an $11 angle grinder for a one-off project and have put hours of use on it over the past year. Whenever it burns up I will spend another $11. :meh:

Why don't you get a Harbor Freight Truck (Jeep)?

I have a bunch of their stuff too and it all has held, but I'm careful what I buy.
 
If a Jeep was 1/4 the price of a Land Cruiser I likely would have. Paying $11 for a tool I will use once every 2 months makes more sense than spending $180 on something that is overbuilt for my needs.

If I changed tires out for a living I'd definitely buy a $500 Snap-On impact, but my life or career is not riding on my HF impact wrench. It's an aid for convenience. The $420 I saved can go to making other things convenient.
 
No, they're not all the same. That's like saying an Edsel and a Mustang are the same because Ford made both. Like any product, depends on what is spec-ed to the factory. Warn seems to not take a drubbing for their imported winches. And not all imports have the same bad rep that is implied here. Most reports on the Badlands 12k are actually pretty positive once the discussion gets beyond the Warn fanboys point.

Most important is doing a good install, knowing your winch, and knowing how to safely recover stuff with it. Mostly you don't hear specifics of why a winch failed, just that it did. It is so easy to mess up any winch with a little ignorance about duty cycle. Yeah, some resist the "loose nut behind the wheel" problem better than others, but none are immune to that. If you regularly abuse your equipment, yeah, you should spend top dollar, because you're going to need all the help you can get if you don't know better, but it won't make the winch immune to abuse.
It was stated early in this discussion that these Chinese winches sound like they have gravel inside them (red flag) and it doesn't matter which slave worker made the winch, not one of them will stand the test of time if actually used more than a few times per year.

Installing a winch on a mail order bumper is very simple and straight forward because there is only one way to do it so I don't buy into the improper installation theory.

As I said, on my Engo 10k, there is a set screw that penetrates the drum and is torqued from the outside. This set screw has something to do with the brake (per the Engo rep I spoke with) and it came loose. You can't see that it is loose because it is buried in the rope on the drum. The set screw backed out enough to hook the rope leaving me unable unspool about half the winch line. In the process of trying to free up the winch line, the brake jammed up because of the loose set screw. These winches are cheaper for a very good reason.

Spending $1400 on a winch is difficult to stomach which is why I kept a close eye on craigslist for a very good used Warn. After a couple weeks I found what I was looking for at 1/3 the price of brand new.
 
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It wasn't stated early in this discussion that these Chinese winches sound like they have gravel inside them (red flag) and it doesn't matter which slave worker made winch, not one of them will stand the test of time if actually used more than a few times per year.

Installing a winch on a mail order bumper is very simple and straight forward because there is only one way to do it so I don't buy into the improper installation theroery.

As I said, on my Engo 10k, there is a set screw that penetrates the drum and is torqued from the outside. This set screw has something to do with the brake (per the Engo rep I spoke with) and it came loose. You can't see that it is loose because it is buried in the rope on the drum. The set screw backed out enough to hook the rope leaving me unable unspool about half the winch line. In the process of trying to free up the winch line, the brake jammed up because of the loose set screw. These winches are cheaper for a very good reason.

Spending $1400 on a winch is difficult to stomach which is why I kept a close eye on craigslist for a very good used Warn. After a couple weeks I found what I was looking for at 1/3 the price of brand new.

I totally agree. I spent two years waiting for for the right landcruiser to come up and when it did, rust free, new leather, just over 200k FZJ80, i went for it. i drove two hours and paid $2700 for it. I am waiting until I find enough parts to rebuild a warn 24-75 winch. My buddy with the HF winch, took it apart, stripped it of whatever gunk it was originally packed with and regreased it with quality marine grease before he ever used it. There are ways to work around the inherent HF problems, but no product is immune to failure and there is something to be said for having a warranty.
 
I'm on my 4th year on mine. Had many pulls (one being a self recovery) and a Hummer being the heaviest pull.

If my counts are correct, I've had 14 pull, from 40-80ft, yes I am counting because I wanted to know how long it will last until it ceases...

So far it's holding up. The only dislike I have to say is as I pull something heavy, it tends to be loud as fawk... like a crying cow...

I've saved some $$ and may get a warn and move the HF on my Willy's...
 
Lord knows that there has NEVER been a failure with a WARN winch! Oh, wait a minute? I bought my rig from an established Cruiser guy and he had already mounted an M12 on the ARB front end. One of the first times I used it was on some old machinery that needed to be repositoned. On the first two pulls it worked fine, but after 20 minutes of repositioning my rig into a good spot, on the 3rd pull it quit working in the middle of the pull. Just stopped dead. None of this was a hard pull so I don't think I was beyond the Duty Cycle. Wound my rope around my bush bars and drove away. Several hours later I had time to trouble shoot the winch and it worked just fine. Overload? Relay? Whatever, it FAILED when I wanted/expected it to work. Since then I have made some really long hard pulls without incident. I never changed or fixed anything so I have no idea what/why it failed once, but IT DID!
 
Buy whatever your concience will allow you to buy.
 
buy two of them and keep one in the back as a spare
 
I have had several Warn winches, the one I use most is on the front of my ATV hooked to my snow plow (constant up and down). Never had any failure w/ any Warn. FWIW.
 
I killed a warn m8000. The copper main power strap would just burn up on heavy pulls. Never could figure out. Tossed it.
 
I had a HF floor jack that had it's 2 roller wheels crushed when I tried to re-position the jack with the weight on it. I avoid HF stuff if the material is important like the gears in these Badland winch. If the metal gears fail because of material quality then everything else is irrelevant.

Another note, experience in design is important- Warn probably had the experiences in design. field experiences vs most other companies experiences in copy which may not have the knowledge of intricate details, like working in water. I read some report of water wetting the winches from water crossing, rendering it short/ in-operable- don't remember brand but it's some thing to keep in mind.

I bought a TJM 12k winches for the 1.5 price of a Badland. Didn't see much review but at least TJM had a reputation for other products and experiences in off road market.
 
I have had the Badlands 12k for 6 years now and have done some extensive pulls. Still works and had no signs of water or mud internally when I opened it up last year to clock the winch.
 
Do warns fail yea
Do HF winches fail yea

Those are the facts as a media person would post them. But if you search on the frequency of failures I'd wager that it's one warn failure to every 10 HF failure.

Buy the best winch you can afford. When you need it you don't want to think about it taking a s*** on your face.
 
Most winch failure are electrically related due to the high amperage. Take a look at the relay packs on a Warn and Chinese winch and its obvious the quality difference. And yes anything and everything can will fail in time.
 
I agree. There is a website I found awhile back with upgrades for the WARN 2475 winch and GIGGLEPIN winches ( the latter is a top of the line competition winch) they sell waterproof solenoids/ relay packs that you can add on to an existing winch. sorry for not remembering the link.
 
I agree. There is a website I found awhile back with upgrades for the WARN 2475 winch and GIGGLEPIN winches ( the latter is a top of the line competition winch) they sell waterproof solenoids/ relay packs that you can add on to an existing winch. sorry for not remembering the link.

I looked at the GIGGLEPIN in the past, crazy serious winching.
 
OK - slow today, had to delete prior posts. Evidently there is " Superwinch " and " POS Superwinch " from Northern Tool. You get one of these and you will never regret it. S9000. I've been running one for 20 years. Same fxxxing winch. Same design. Outstanding value. Excellent factory support for parts. I rebuilt mine three years ago. Only electrical parts and perfect customer support. Three year warranty. What more can you ask for?

Superwinch X9/S9000 Series

Beats the crap out of Warn products and I've had those before.
 

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