Esteemed listers (and winchers everywhere),
I'm no winch expert, but some of these test results
seem a little misleading. What does it prove in real
life?
Perhaps Mile Marker has the greatest winch ever built,
perhaps not- but keep in mind that a lab test can
prove EXACTLY what you design it to prove.
One of the tests is to drag a large Ford pickup truck
(with a one ton payload) up a 30 degree (that's 58% in
military terms) incline WITH THE BRAKES LOCKED!
Another test winched the truck across concrete with
the brakes locked (which it did just fine). How
realistic is that? Yet another test caused the battery
clamp to melt off (circuit protection?). What does
that prove? That a hydraulic winch wouldn't draw a lot
of current? Now there's a newsflash!
How many of those performance tests were realistic
versus how many were specifically designed to show the
Mile Marker winch better?
Of course they haven't compared the results with any
other brands of winches (or their own for that
matter).
As another contributor pointed out, how well does a
hydraulic (or a PTO) winch work with the engine turned
off?
As to wire rope failure, that is a problem with all
winches including the hand cranked boat winch I used
to have. I'll bet both winches would fail the 30 year
old (maybe 60 year old) cable on my 1/2-Ton Dodge WC.
Let's compare winches with two year old
environmentally conditioned pre-stretched cables. I
don't know many people that use their winch
frequently, and know even fewer that replace their
cable annually.
While I agree that an electric winch might benefit
from circuit overload protection, that is a cost issue
that needs to be addressed by the consumer. Again, I
question whether the duty cycle is in fact realistic.
Some of the testing used two 12v batteries in parallel
PLUS a 200 amp battery charger during winching. Whose
truck is this replicating????
I think that while this winch test bings up some
interesting points, it is a smokescreen. Nowhere is it
stated that the test plan was developed by an
objective third party. The test plan was specifically
created by and paid for by Mile Marker to make the
competing winch (and probably any electric winch) look
bad.
Brandon
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> www.winchtest.com
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This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 05 2001 - 00:40:34 PDT