Why I opted for a 5,000lb Winch.

Well, your first wrap on that winch spool will yield 5K of power but it will suffer a substantial decrease of power with each additional wrap. And if your yanking that Civic uphill or its mired in deep sand, you're going to be pulling more than it's GVWR. And lastly, who goes into the sand with a Civic?

If a 5K was all I had, I would run with it. With pulleys of course. Though I'd rather have ample winch capacity so the winch is not working 100 percent.

 

In probably not going to read all this but you’re aware that 5k winch is a rated at 5k ONLY for a straight line pull with just a wrap on the drum right?

I won’t paint you a picture of all the times off road you will not have those exact conditions.

 

I pick whichever rating I used the prior year to winch the mother in law out of my house after thanksgiving visit.

 

Okay, it’s pretty presumptuous of you to call us all “ADHD, hardheaded, and aging” because we didn’t all agree with your long winded rambling post of your OPINION about winch size (I read all your posts too). You didn’t present any meaningful or helpful info just why you think it’s a good idea to disregard longstanding rules of thumb for winching.

Maybe YOU should be less ADHD, use the search function (or scroll down like 10 posts), and read the 40 page dumpster fire of a thread on the exact same topic that has been going on for a year now. Your post didn’t bring anything new or helpful to the table that hasn’t already been addressed there:

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads...a-waste-of-money.682105/page-33#post-24664641

I said it before and I’ll say it again:

Sorry we didn’t all give you high fives and accolades for for revolutionizing the winching world with your opinions that honestly aren’t a very good idea.

 

And the attacks begin..................ho hum.....

 

My comment about people not reading the post was based on nothing more than the responses all being about recovery and not my post but an assumption of what I might say. For myself, I run more risk of running out of power on the road someplace so I run a 75 watt solar panel to address this. For some people 10w would be fine to keep the battery maintained, if somebody said they had 10w I wouldn't tell them all the things it won't or can't do. I'm well aware of everything that can't be done with a 5,000lb winch but I'm also pointing out that winches are for more than just pulling trucks out of mud which isn't what I need 99% of the time anyway. It's just like that 10w solar panel, if you're stuck in the middle of no place it may not charge your battery in 3 hours like the 75w panel will but it will charge is if you let it do what it's meant to do for 2 days.

As for Civics in the sand, I live in the desert, if you can drive it down a road somebody ends up getting it stuck in the sand here. Very rural living so goofy things happen often, I've seen emu running down the road out here so nothing shocks me anymore.

As a side note, most of my back roads miles are done snake hunting, if I still 4x4ed I'd get a real truck (statement meant to trigger the snowflakes) like my old Cruisers with actual axles and birfields. So my recovery needs are not based on 4x4ing, they're based on rural roads with A LOT OF LIGHTING!!

 

I’ll assume “snake hunting on back roads” is code for something and recuse myself from this discussion.

 

No, it's actually looking for snakes, pyros, triaspis, pituophis, lampropeltis, atrox and so on. I'm more worried about a rattler bite than needing a winch to unstick myself by a large margin.

 

Having an undersized winch is fine. But realize that you still need your cable/synthetic line thats rated for the max pull you can make with your rigging. 10 or 15k lbs of pull through a line rated for 5k isnt going to work for very long. And you're more likely to need line extension to reach your anchor point(s).

I agree with your point in your original post about tires/lockers/4×4/lowrange etc all being usefull for getting stuck just a little further down the trail. I go out by myself all the time, and try to stick to places I don't need 4x4 much at all, preferring to use 4Lo for the crawl control more than anything. A good shovel and full set of chains has saved me more than my winch.

 

Thanks for the comment and I fully agree with you. The point of my post was mostly that you can put a winch of any size on anything, just because a person has a winch on their truck doesn't mean they have to use it to get their truck unstuck but if they do get stuck it also doesn't mean they should just ignore having it. I get the logic and rules of thumb for sure but a which has SOOO many uses beyond getting a truck out of the mud.

 

It's too bad capstan style winches aren't more available. A lot of the smaller winches won't hold very much of 5/16" or 3/8" synthetic, tying (pun intended) back into my other post. A capstan winch would eliminate that problem.

 

Well, I don't have a four-letter name but I do have ADHD. The real kind, diagnosed by a doctor with big framed degrees on the wall.
Let's throw "millennial snowflake" in there too, just for good measure.

A 5k winch is probably just fine for you. That's cool. Nobody said you are wrong on that point.


However "How stuck are you planning to get." is a hilarious (I'm trying to be generous) statement.


The areas where I wheel, we have clay mud and big hills. 5k is not going to cut it for me out here. Good luck to you.

And we're all still waiting on the "miracle ATV winch with MA" to show up.