I and a few friends have the 12K winch. For me, it wasn't bought of of necessity, but rather a last ditch tool for when things just really, really bad. So, I don't use it much.
However...
Like you, I was dubious but rather than just pop off about how it's garbage (it does have good reviews from reputable sources) and throw $1500 or whatever at Warn, I decided to buy it on sale, take it all apart and if it passed the muster at that point, give it a fair shake on the trail.
First off, the wiring is pretty damn all right. Nice thick copper wire all around with decently thick insulation and well crimped terminal ends. I'm an aircraft electrician and the wiring on this winch isn't too far off from the quality you'd see on the C-130's I work on. It is *NOT* aircraft grade, but it's closer to that than what you'd expect HF to sell you. The relay is massive and the plastic it's housed in (not the box, but the actual relay itself) has a pretty high melting point. All terminal posts are big, stout and come with proper hardware. One thing I would suggest doing is to use a high temp RTV or epoxy resin to pot all the connections. It'll keep them secure and weatherproof. The rubber boots they include aren't bad, but I like overkill, so I potted mine. The only real gripe I had about the electrical end of things was that the rubber cap that covers the receptacle for the remote is a bit cheesy and doesn't have a key on it to fill the slot on the outside of the receptacle, which introduces a path for stuff to get in. I wanted the wireless remote, so I just sealed the plug with RTV when I plugged the Rx in and called it a day. If you want to go overboard, find a mil-spec three pin Cannon plug and use that in place of the ding dong plug they give you.
The remote is made from a really nice glass reinforced nylon (30%, if I recall the marking) and the switch inside was bigger than I expected with a really nice positive click- click feel to it. But since I went with the wireless remote setup, the supplied control sits as a spare.
On the hardware end of things, the stuff they give you to bolt this big bastard down isn't half bad. I can't recall the grade, but I remember thinking, "huh... no s***..." when I saw that it was either 8.8 or 10.9. Or maybe higher. I don't remember. I do remember that a file barely touched it, so it can't be the usual pudding-grade alloy.
On to the gearbox. The shafts and gears were all proper hardened steel and the gears had decent finishes on the faces of the teeth, unlike what you usually see from HF crap. Again with the file, it didn't even touch the gears. I haven't been inside any other winch gearboxes, but the width of the gears struck me as overkill and wider than I would have expected. The grease was low grade like you'd expect and I figured that since I was in there, I'd clean everything up and restuff it with some HP Moly upon reassembly. I did notice that it was much easier to engage and disengage the clutch after I relubed it...
I didn't pull the motor apart, but I've seen pictures and video of it and it's the standard fare- epoxied windings, balancing grooves and decent brushes with brass holders and heavy springs. I can't recall what type of connectors were used for the brushes, though.
The cable is a cable. I've seen better and I've seen worse and considering that the cable's eventually going to get dragged across rocks and whatnot, it's a consumable. Buy a spare or wind it with synth and keep the original as a trail spare. The thimble and ferrule didn't appear out of the ordinary, nor did the hook and pin. There certainly are better out there, but you'll pay for them. I did some searching and couldn't find any posts about anyone having issues with this stuff, so I left it alone.
My biggest complaint, though, is the roller fairlead. It sticks out like a wart and the rollers didn't initially roll when the cable ran across them. I have since taken them apart and lubed them with the same HP Moly that went in the gearbox and they roll fine now. But still... it just is so damn clumsy. As with the hardware for mounting the winch, what they give you for the fairlead is good stuff and throwing it out would be a waste.
Fitment wise, it fit just fine. HOWEVER! Unless you have a 1" or more body lift, the clutch lever (or in/out lever if you prefer) will hit your trans cooler. I have a 1" body lift, and there's about 3/4" between the lever and the lower passengers side corner of the cooler. You have two options- either cut and reweld the lever so it's pointed somewhere else, or clock the gearbox to rotate the lever forward. Since you're already taking the gearbox apart to clean and put some proper lube in there...
Now that it's in and wired, go play with it, but don't be in a hurry because it's SLOW. When a friend first saw just how slow it is, he joked that they must have put a 24V or 48V motor in by accident. Seriously... it's slow. But, slow's the name of the game when winching, so what's the rush anyway? If you're throwing this on a competition rig, you're not going to win any races. But for the average dummy that occasionally gets in over his ass on the trail or the occasional stump removal, it's a solid buy.
HF has some hidden gems, and this is one of them.
