Good winch for pulling 2 ton van?

Ectophile

If it's an emergency, you could use a Tirfor winch.  Genuine ones are quality bits of kit (and priced accordingly).  But if it's a big patch of mud, you could be cranking the handle for an awful long time.

The big advantage is that they are powered by your arm.

The biggest is rated at 3200Kg.  if you have a tall tree to throw the rope around, that's powerful enough to lift the whole van off the ground!

paul_c123

I have plenty of practical experience with winching, having owned a LR Discovery with a winch for offroading, and more recently a recovery truck. 

They're great for recovery off road so long as there's a tree in the right place, and you want to go forwards, but even with a winch its a slow process. Better still is another vehicle to act as an anchor to attach to, and even better is another vehicle with a winch to recover you (then you don't need to worry so much about pulling only forwards, you can be pulled sideways or backwards too, so long as the recovery vehicle can get to you).

There's a lot to be said for fitting the winch at the back, for off roading. That way if you get stuck you can retreat, with a forwards mounted winch the only option is to keep going forwards (or do some weird multi-part sideways turning).

Regarding the recovery truck, only once has it got stuck itself and I used its winch to self-recover. Oh, and its recovered and transported many cars too.

Mounting and installing the cables for a winch is pretty easy on a Land Rover (there's plenty of online vendors who have winch bumpers, and you buy a kit with the wiring etc) or a recovery truck. On a van, not so much - can you weld? You will probably need to construct some kind of mount.

forgotmyname

Undersizing a winch could end in tears and a lot of wasted money.  It's OK adding 50% which maybe fine on a fairly level
hard standing surface. Add a few mm of mud to that equation and an incline you may wish you had bougt the 8000kg winch
instead of a 4000kg one.

A few have mention the battery and you need a really good battery or better still a pair of them to share the load and help
dissipate the heat. The CCA is a clue but that maybe measured for a sub 5 second start cycle.  The power required from a
winch is likely to reduce that considerably.

Imagine holding your ignition key on with the starter cranking the engine for 10 minutes or more. That is a lot of heat to
remove from the system.

Been there with the undersized winch thinking I only need to pull the caravan past a small dip. The problem was when it
rolled into that dip it took a lot more effort than we realised to pull it out of the dip.

1200kg caravan with a 2250kg winch only moving it 25ft on a flat surface but that little dip got us too many times, sheared
the teeth off a gear and I binned it and bought a caravan mover instead.

GervisLooper

Ectophile said:

If it's an emergency, you could use a Tirfor winch.  Genuine ones are quality bits of kit (and priced accordingly).  But if it's a big patch of mud, you could be cranking the handle for an awful long time.

The big advantage is that they are powered by your arm.

The biggest is rated at 3200Kg.  if you have a tall tree to throw the rope around, that's powerful enough to lift the whole van off the ground!

How do you split quotes on this forum? I have been able to do it sometimes and others not..

Indeed with all this talk of the massive battery that would be required to run an electrical one the man/woman powered ones are seeming more attractive again. I watched a video of a chap doing it and didn't seem that slow. The camera was by the wheel and it looked like a couple of inches every few pulls.

Sure not rocket speed but as I said I am not in a hurry and if it gets the job done it would save many hundreds, particularly as I mentioned I would not intend to use much, and good exercise to boot.

GervisLooper

forgotmyname said:

Undersizing a winch could end in tears and a lot of wasted money.  It's OK adding 50% which maybe fine on a fairly level
hard standing surface. Add a few mm of mud to that equation and an incline you may wish you had bougt the 8000kg winch
instead of a 4000kg one.

A few have mention the battery and you need a really good battery or better still a pair of them to share the load and help
dissipate the heat. The CCA is a clue but that maybe measured for a sub 5 second start cycle.  The power required from a
winch is likely to reduce that considerably.

Imagine holding your ignition key on with the starter cranking the engine for 10 minutes or more. That is a lot of heat to
remove from the system.

Been there with the undersized winch thinking I only need to pull the caravan past a small dip. The problem was when it
rolled into that dip it took a lot more effort than we realised to pull it out of the dip.

1200kg caravan with a 2250kg winch only moving it 25ft on a flat surface but that little dip got us too many times, sheared
the teeth off a gear and I binned it and bought a caravan mover instead.

Still no hard numbers on what battery bank size would be required to work a winch comfortably? 800a, 5000a, 10000a?

How are they 'normally' installed in vehicles? They are meant for off-roading mostly right so presumably for those weight is at a premium so having huge battery banks would not be desired.

Ok I am just looking up articles on winch batteries. Seems a totally different kettle of fish to leisure or starter batteries and would be several hundred quid.

The electric winch idea seems like a none starter as would be looking at the best part of a grand probably. Pointless for 'just in case' use.

paul_c123

GervisLooper said:

Still no hard numbers on what battery bank size would be required to work a winch comfortably? 800a, 5000a, 10000a?

How are they 'normally' installed in vehicles? They are meant for off-roading mostly right so presumably for those weight is at a premium so having huge battery banks would not be desired.

Ok I am just looking up articles on winch batteries. Seems a totally different kettle of fish to leisure or starter batteries and would be several hundred quid.

The electric winch idea seems like a none starter as would be looking at the best part of a grand probably. Pointless for 'just in case' use.

They're not battery sizes, they're current flows - you need to appreciate the difference between A and Ah. Its explained previously on this thread.

They're normally installed without a battery upgrade, in the 2 of my own cases and the many others I've seen, its normally onto a big diesel (occasionally a V8 petrol...) so the existing starter battery is good enough. Don't skimp on the cables and connectors though.

Yep, a proper winch install would be about £1000 onto a "van", probably less if you had an off-roader and could find a suitable aftermarket bumper secondhand. And probably less if you can weld/fabricate a mount yourself.

531063

Have a look at getting a snatch block as well, it will double the pulling power of any winch

MX5huggy

There was only short discussion of tyres, yes get better tyres will make a vast difference to the terrain you can get across, you could go for something mid off road performance such as Michelin Cross Climate 2’s or something more off road oriented from someone like BF Goodrich 

Mildly_Miffed

531063 said:

Have a look at getting a snatch block as well, it will double the pulling power of any winch

At the expense of halving the speed, and thus greatly increasing the power consumption.

531063

Mildly_Miffed said:

531063 said:

Have a look at getting a snatch block as well, it will double the pulling power of any winch

At the expense of halving the speed, and thus greatly increasing the power consumption.

Slow and steady wins the race though