MAKING AN ELECTRIC WINCH MORE VERSATILE
MULTI-USE OUTWEIGHS MACHO WHEN IT COMES TO A WINCH
It would appear that electric winches and four-wheel drives are fated to be together. Serious enthusiasts of the off-road lifestyle are likely to make a winch their very next purchase after the obligatory bull bar. Even the ‘Toorak tractors’, Australia’s colloquialism for those four-wheel drives that seldom venture outside the affluent suburbs of our fair cities, are fitted with them to give them that ‘macho look’.
Pros and cons of an electric winch
There are several shortcomings with fitting an electric winch permanently to your vehicle. One is that almost every four-wheel drive spends a large proportion of its life without doing anything that calls for a winch, hence its owner is spending extra money unnecessarily lugging around a heavy device — not to mention the extra wear and tear on the tyres and suspension of the vehicle — for no purpose.
Another is that it has been known for likely lads looking for some entertainment on a quiet evening, to play out a winch cable over the roof of the winch’s vehicle and fasten it to the tow bar, before shorting out the remote-control connection. As you can imagine this tends to detract from the look of the car in short order!
In the event of a crash, a heavy weight like a winch is another solid chunk of metal that will exacerbate the damage to the vehicles involved.
Finally, a front-mounted winch is great when all you want to do is drag yourself in that direction; it’s not so great when you would rather back up once you are stuck or if any fixed point for anchoring the winch happens to be behind you! Using a front-mounted winch to pull yourself backwards requires installing roller guides under the vehicle as well as threading the cable under it, something that can be a really yucky problem when the vehicle is bogged.
You never know when you will need it
Even if you don’t own a four-wheel drive but like to venture off the beaten track a bit, this small project may be just what you need, because sooner or later you will find yourself out of your vehicle’s depth. Something as simple as turning around on a narrow track can be enough to bog your car, as I found out to my cost recently.
There is a way that the drawbacks of front-mounted winches can be avoided at the same time as both the winch and the vehicle are made more versatile. Instead of a permanently mounted winch, why not mount the winch on a short bar with a tow-ball fitting on one end? Yes, it does make it more cumbersome and a bit more grunt will be needed to position it when the need arises, but it suddenly becomes far more versatile.
The modification required to the vehicle is a tow-ball bracket on the bull bar, or at a strong point on the bumper bar. A tow ball on the front of any vehicle is a great asset. I have fitted them on several of the work vehicles I have owned over the years simply because they make it so much easier to manoeuvre trailers into tight spaces, and place them exactly where you want them. However, the normal car
owner need not mount a tow ball on the front of the vehicle to have most of the benefits of this winch system; all that is needed is a slight modification, which I will address later in this article.
Having a tow-ball fitting on the winch assembly has the additional benefit that the pull between the winch and its anchor point will always be in a straight line, virtually eliminating the possibility of chafing the synthetic rope or cable on the fairlead of the winch while maximising its pulling power. A fixed winch system must cope with these problems when the anchor point is offset from the direction the vehicle is facing.
Fitting the electric winch
You will need to run a suitablesized positive cable from the battery to both ends of the vehicle, so that you can connect the winch to power when you deploy it. I would recommend this if you are using a really heavy winch capable of pulling three or more tonnes. For lighter duty winches, Anderson plugs are sufficient. These Anderson plugs are now capable of transmitting 50A to more than 175A, depending on the size you select. Having a robust ‘power point’ is also handy for running an emergency light or any other 12V appliance as long as you have the appropriate Anderson plug fitted to the appliance.
An alternative, if cargo room isn’t critical, is to set the winch assembly up with a dedicated extension lead (as I have shown in the diagram). Fit an Anderson plug on short leads to the vehicle battery as needed, or permanently. This set-up allows the winch to be used on any vehicle with a tow ball, making it even more versatile. For added versatility, make up a short lead with an Anderson plug on one end and a couple of solid alligator clips on the other.
The main drawback of setting up your winch as a detachable unit — apart from the physical exertion required to get it ready to do its job — is that the assembly takes up cargo space. Set against that, of course, is the advantage that your vehicle won’t be dragging it around 24/7.
An option is to consider using a smaller winch in combination with some pulleys. If you go down this route, remember the correlation between effort and distance. As a rough rule of thumb, doubling the distance halves the effort required. Even a small winch can exert considerably more pull if a sheaf pulley is used at the anchor point, and will probably suffice in most situations — unless you are determined at all costs to bog your vehicle down to the floorpan. A smaller winch takes up less cargo space and the physical effort needed to deploy it is considerably reduced, as is the financial outlay incurred in purchasing the equipment.