Winches on trailers

I welded a 2" receiver on the center support of my gooseneck and mounted my winch on a cradle so I can take it out and use anywhere. Works for me? I've winched a many times with a stand alone battery as well. I always keep my Lil Mule 2 ton hand winch handy just in case for a last resort. It will work EVERY time but prefer the electric due to obvious reasons. I've also used dual 2" tie down ratchet straps with one on each corner going back and forth before and that worked but only cause Lil Mule was loaned out.

A rule of thumb is you will ALWAYS need your winch when you loan it out...
 
Before I landed an awesome deal on a Warn 4700 utility winch I used to use my comealong and a strap to load non-running vehicles. It was slow but worked fine.

I rarely use the winch on the trailer so I do not keep a battery on it. When I need to use it I steal the battery from something else and have some marine terminal adapters to use for hooking up the winch (it has ring terminals on the leads). I do periodically spray oil on the cable to keep it from rusting up since these trailer winches get used less than vehicle mounted ones do!
 
i have a superwinch 4500 on a removable mount and welded a receiver to the trailer so I can take it off when not in use. I run a long very heavy duty jumper cable from the winch to my truck battery. it works pretty good. I usually have to wait for one to two heat cycles of the winch, but sure beats the comealong method I used to do.
 
I have a smittybilt 8k on a receiver mount on my trailer. In my trailer box I have a group 31 truck battery and I use a solar charger to keep the battery topped off. Got everything on sale and not all at the same time so there's around 400 in the whole setup.

Duane
 
Can I see some pictures of winches on a regular tag along trailer for some mounting ideas?
 
Stuntman Autoworks said:
Petersons did a big winch shootout ot long ago and that Harbor Freight winch beat out several higher end units. If I remember right the HF won the best bang for the buck award. So just because it's cheap don't mean it won't work. With that being said our 40 ft gooseneck has a 15k lb winch on it and a deep cycle battery. The only thing that charges it is from the truck and I've never hooked to the trailer and had the battery be dead or go dead while I was using it. Just my .02.
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I missed that piece, but when HF puts their 12K winch on sale, at $294.78, It's just looks Scary! That & stories of winches that didn't work, right out of the box.
 
BigClay said:
Can I see some pictures of winches on a regular tag along trailer for some mounting ideas?
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I don't have any pictures, but on my last car trailer I put the winch in a mounting plate and bolted it directly down to the floor on the front of the trailer. Under the floor I used a piece of steel or another mounting plate to distribute the load. But that was because my deck was wood.

Edit: Here's the pic I have showing location.

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paradisePWoffrd said:
I don't have any pictures, but on my last car trailer I put the winch in a mounting plate and bolted it directly down to the floor on the front of the trailer. Under the floor I used a piece of steel or another mounting plate to distribute the load. But that was because my deck was wood.
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Did you "sandwich" the wood between the winch mounting plate and the plate under the floor, and bolt the two plates together? Was thinking of doing the same on my trailer (with a wood deck) but didn't know if that would provide sufficient strength. Didn't want to rip the floor apart when I had to winch something on to the trailer.
 
tlucier said:
Did you "sandwich" the wood between the winch mounting plate and the plate under the floor, and bolt the two plates together? Was thinking of doing the same on my trailer (with a wood deck) but didn't know if that would provide sufficient strength. Didn't want to rip the floor apart when I had to winch something on to the trailer.
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Yeah, sandwich the wood & floor braces between the plates. It was also directly next to front plate/crossmember on the trailer.

I never had any problems with the winch and have winched things that made my 8k winch struggle.
 
Here is the mount for my winch. My winch is an old used warn 12k lbs unit bolted to a 8 inch wide piece of 3/8 channel with 2" tall sides.

Also have a spare battery strapped to the channel.

Welded the channel to a receiver hitch so I can use it anywhere.

Can make several pulls on a charged battery, and usually just run my big jumper cables to my truck.

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