Front hitch mount winch, pros and cons

CARiD

New Member
Joined
Feb 16, 2016
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In a recent tech article on our website Front Hitches: Multiple Uses for Your SUV or Truck we covered front mount hitch receivers. They can serve various purpose, and one of the options is a hitch mount winch that fits a 2" receiver. It's pretty convenient if you don't need to carry a winch all the time (for daily commute for example). This way your winch is not exposed to the the weather elements and can maintain good shape for a long time.

What are your thoughts about this winch installation method? Any pros/cons?
 
I have a couple of issues with the receiver mounted winches. The Suburban has front and rear receivers rated for 10,000# towing capacity, as it is my tow rig. It came with them. I've never used the front receiver.

Using this on a TJ, specifically, has the following problems:
The cradle and winch are a heavy assembly. Moving it around is a pain in the back side. Additionally, my TJ SE is weight sensitive, so the convenience of being able to move the winch from the front to the back has to be balanced against the additional weight of the cradle.

The cradle and winch are bulky. A TJ has limited storage room inside. Where do you put the bloody thing where it isn't in the way?

Decreased attack and departure angles. The receivers hang down in just the wrong places in both the front and the back. Judging from the abuse the receivers on the Suburban have taken, it's a non-starter on the TJ.

The cradle and winch are held in with a single 9/16" (5/8"?) pin. The connection is only as strong as the shear loading resistance of that pin. The receiver gets subjected to twisting loads, bending loads and shock loads with a cradle mounted winch. All of that is translated to a shear load on the pin. I'm skeptical that the pin holes in the receiver or the pin itself would hold up undamaged over time.

Running high amperage wiring to the back of the Jeep to power the winch is a non-starter. That's a lot of heavy gauge wire to figure out what to do with.

You would need at least a 10,000# rated reciever to mount the unit on. Let's say you have an 8,000# winch. Let's further say that you are using a snatch block. That doubles the loading to 16,000#. You can rarely pull at a perfectly straight angle, so there is always some side loading involved with winching. I'm guessing that would be tough on the equipment.

With more than 45 years of travel in the back country, I could have used a winch in the back exactly twice. (slow learner, I guess) If I wasn't an idiot and out there by myself, there would have been a better solution to the problem than winching out backwards.
 
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