I have heard all the arguments about hydraulic winches versus electric. I
have made the comparison between my old personal vehicle, a 86 K-5 blazer
with a warn 12,000lb electric winch, vs. a M1009 with a hydraulic MileMarker
12,000lb winch.
I have never experanced any problems with the warn winch, except a cable
that frayed, and nearly snapped. In all fairness, that was my fault for
running it over a big sharp rock. It does draw alot of power, and i had a
heavy duty alternator installed taht supplied 250% of the OEM. That was also
because i had off-road lights, a lightbar and siren, etc. The darn thing
would smoke if you used it more then a few minutes, and it would eventually
slow down, but, as long as the battery had at elast some juice, the winch
ran. I used it after I rolled the truck to pull it to somewhere where a
wrecker could get to it.
The hydraluc winch o the other hand. It didnt smoke, however it downright
quit on my several times after more then 10 minutes of use. When you use it,
you have no power steering whatsoever, and it steers worse then a truck
without power steering. I had a line break once when trying to steer and
winch, resulting in a stuck truck, with no winch and no steering. Plus the
major downside of one is that if the truck doesnt run, if somethings wrong
with the engine, or if you rolled it like i did, you have no winch. and
thats bad.
A curious note I sent to milemarker, when I saw a ad saying "in tests done
by 4wheeler magazine blah blah, the warn winch quit and smoked and stuff"
Well, i found that article, and yes, the warn winch quit first once, but the
magazine declared it the winner, saying that the milemarker winch didnt
complete the course. Milemarker never did answer my letter on that one.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 05 2001 - 00:40:34 PDT