Badlands Apex 12,000lb winch in an ARB bumper

Disregard, will be making my own fairlead. Too expensive for the purpose

 

The Apex 12k is decent, pretty much a knock off of the Warn Evo, but it’s been tested and proven to be pretty solid

 

Yeah mine has worked quite well when I've needed to use it and the wireless control is very convenient. Thing takes some serious power though, an idle up is helpful.

 

Only a little pissed you can't rotate the clutch on the Apex.

I see a lot of good things about the ZXR 12000 for the price. It may be slow but it still pulls well and seems to be reliable. Should be plenty for the Tacoma.

 

You can pull your Tacoma straight up a wall with a 12k winch. Better to have too much than too little I guess. OP got his for less than $250 and that's a great deal.

 

My buddy got the Apex for about $260. They rang him up wrong. Sold it to him for 60% off!! They calculated the 40% and that's what they sold it to him for. Lucky bastard!

 

FWIW, I made the 12k Apex fit behind my ARB.

Yes, it would have been a lot cleaner if it was clockable. I ended up cutting the selector and notching the AC condenser crossmember. I can* free spool but it’s a pita to turn the selector so I usually just winch out when I need it.

 

I wanted the full functionality of the winch and didn't want to have to do anything crazy to get it.

I ended up installing their 12,000lb ZXR winch and it was tight! The top of the winch touches my radiator crossmember (edit, barely misses touching my radiator crossmember!) and where I chose to mount the control box is pushing in on my plastic grill.

I swapped out the steel cable for a 70 dollar 25,000lb line from Amazon. I have a new hook and a few accutremon coming from Amazon as well. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the way it came out.

I need to pretension the rope and then I'm looking forward to using it. Hoping to get into some snow wheeling soon.

 

Some pics. Please ignore the loose spotlight wires. I need to get some wire casing to clean them up.

 

Got the same gnats ass fitment mine does to the core support. Just watch that the spooled line doesn't pile up too high there when winching or the line will fray on that support bracket.

 

how's the access to the spool switch? would not for my truck skid plates in the way to get an arm up under there, hell my 09 getting to the control is a pain in the ass with the 9in lights up front!

 

Spool switch is easy for me to get to. It sits right on the bottom of the winch as it sits in the truck.

I would imagine even with a skid plate you could reach in from the side pretty easily. I'm not sure though. My truck sits on a 6" bracket lift so my skid plate is pretty far away. I have plenty of room. I can get at it without bending over too much.

 

next question, have you done the H3 LED upgrade to those Hella lights? just ordered some for mine which are sitting on the work bench waiting to go in.

 

I sure have not! I didn't even know about this mod. Do you have a link?

 

there are a few you tube videos basically open them up and toss in a LED, connect like a regular bulb and good to go. i was going to wait for mine to burn out but needed some stuff from Amazon anyway