Winches Explained: What is a Winch & What can it do? - Quadratec Academy

Today in the Quadratec Academy we're talking winches! Hey Rob here for Quadratec.com welcome to another episode of the Quadratec Academy where we cover different tips and tricks on maintaining wrenching on your vehicle how to's and answer some questions that we get a lot here at Quadratec today I thought we'd tackle one of those questions that we hear from not only first time or new Jeep owners but from Jeep owners that maybe have had their vehicle for a while and are starting to just now get into more frequent or intense off-road use and that is well what is a winch why would you want one on your vehicle what's required to put one on your vehicle now I'll be straight forward with you guys if you've already made the decision I've already installed a winch on the front of your Jeep on this video it's pRobably going to cover most of the stuff that you already know however if you fall into one of those categories that I mentioned or maybe you're just someone who you know has walked through parking lots before and said what the heck is that thing on the front of all these Jeeps I'm seeing well that's what I'm going to try to answer quickly for you today in this video now so to put it short a winch it's a mechanical pulling device it's a device a tool that you can install on your vehicle to help free it or get it unstuck when you get in some difficult situations something that can help ensure that you and your vehicle can get off the trail at the end of the day can get back home or can get to your destination now I'm not going to cover in depth any specific features of our winch I have here on the crate today instead I just want to cover some of the general options and features you may see in winches and answer some of those more broader questions now if you want to get more information on specific things like maybe how to install a winch on your vehicle or how to use a winch you can click the info button to head over to the Torque section on the Quadratec website to read some really great articles about winching as well as a ton of other great stuff there so to get back to the topic here winches again it's a mechanical pulling device it's a device here that has a drum with some steel cable or synthetic rope mounted on it usually has a hook on the end of that rope we've got a gear set in here as well as a clutch that can control whether that is engaged or disengaged we've got a motor of some sort now there are a variety of different types of winches available there are hydraulic winches there are basic manual winches but for the purposes of the Jeep world for mounting a winch on the front of your vehicle really the most common option is going to be an electric winch so this is going to operate off of the 12 volts of your vehicle it's going to connect to your vehicle's battery it's got some pretty heavy duty cables on here that are going to be connected to the positive and negative terminals on your vehicle's battery that's because well this motor is a very strong motor it's going to need a lot of power to power this winch I mean we're talking about something that's got the capability of pulling a multiple thousand pound object especially in a stuck situation now with that being said we're talking about a lot of power here we're also talking about a lot of tension a lot of energy when we're freeing a vehicle or recovering a vehicle with a winch so one other thing to be aware of is that you should do a little bit of research on a winch how to operate it safely maybe even get some training there are a lot of places that can give you winch training locally that you can find out so that you can ensure that you know once you've installed a winch on your vehicle that you're using it correctly you're using it safely so as not to damage your equipment your winch your vehicle but also to maintain not only your but other people that may be out on the on the trails around you their safety as well now some of the general features that we may find with an electric winch I mentioned a rope here some type of rope whether that be a steel cable or a synthetic rope each of them have their own advantages steel cable tends to be a little less expensive it also is very very durable and very strong it also happens to be very heavy we're talking about sometimes between 80 and 100 feet of cable on here 80 and 100 feet of steel cable is going to start to weigh a lot the winch itself already weighs a significant amount I mean we're talking 60 70 pounds here maybe more depending on your winch and we're mounting all that to the front of the vehicle now doing that of course is going to affect things like gas mileage total overall weight of the vehicle so something to be aware of that's where a synthetic rope has some advantages of course it's a synthetic rope it's much much lighter than steel cable it's also still very strong however it is going to be a little more expensive because we're engineering a very high performing part now you do need to be concerned with things like uv damage over the years there is some maintenance to take care of a synthetic rope that there's some maintenance with steel cable as well in general synthetic rope is the new and more popular choice for our recreational Jeep use because of its many advantages it's also safer to handle steel rope can splinter over time a synthetic rope just a little bit easier to handle on the end of that synthetic rope well you've got some sort of device to attach that rope to an anchor point so we've got a hook here there are a lot of different things out on the market that you can get to attach to the end of your rope we've also got a winch remote now this happens to be a wireless style remote can also be used in a wired setup where the road actually plugs right here into the side of the winch to operate it we've got some basic functions on there in and out really we're controlling that mechanical drum in there whether we're spooling the line out or feeding that line back in you'll find some additional features from brand to brand from lower to higher tiered winches in that brands but at its very basic function we've got in and out on the remote that's going to control that winch we've also got a clutch handle up here that's going to control our gear set that's going to basically engage or disengage that gear set so that when it's engaged the remote is controlling the winch when it's disengaged we can simply grab that line pull it out take it out to an anchor point so those are some of the basic features of a winch now why you might want a winch on the front of your vehicle well again like I mentioned a little bit earlier to free your vehicle when it's stuck to get yourself home to get yourself to your destination or maybe even to free another vehicle those may be from situations like maybe in deep mud or deep sand or maybe you've got your vehicle in snow or on ice and you've got no traction or very very little amount of traction between your tires and the surface maybe you're on some loose gravel maybe the vehicle is hung up on a rocker on a ledge all of those are situations where you can use that winch to attach it to something in the environment in an immovable or or very heavy piece of something in the environment so a tree a boulder another vehicle that you can attach to to hopefully pull your vehicle out of that difficult situation that you found yourself in that immobile situation or as I mentioned that self-recovery device this tool this winch could also be used to pull another vehicle that you've come along or maybe someone else in your group that you're off-road with maybe they've gotten themselves stuck well you can use your winch to help pull them to get them free to get them moving again so that you can keep heading down the trail keep enjoying your time off road and make its way to your destination or make your way home at the end of the day now the third and really one of the final things that I want to talk about is what's involved in getting a winch mounted on your vehicle now there are some brackets you're going to need a pretty stationary platform bracket mount something to get this winch mounted securely to the front of your vehicle there are some mounts that are compatible with factory bumpers that you can install as well as most aftermarket bumpers are going to have some sort of accommodations for a winch whether that is a built-in accommodation like our bumper on the front of our Jeep here has where the winch is mounted down in the bumper and then the bumper is mounted to the frame of the vehicle or or maybe it's a mouth that goes on top of the bumper but you will need some way to permanently semi-permanently but very securely affix that winch very securely and strongly to the front of your vehicle because as I mentioned as well there's a lot of tension there's a lot of energy involved in freeing or pulling a vehicle now finally witches are available in many different capacities a lot of them you'll commonly see in our Jeep world range from 8 000 to 10 000 or even 12 000 pound capacity winches now there are bigger winches out there there are smaller winches but 8 10 and 12 are going to be the most common for our use and there's a general rule of thumb that you'll want to use to figure out what size winch you need on your vehicle that's one and a half times your vehicle's gross vehicle weight rating so if you've got an older Jeep Wrangler yj or tj or even a newer two-door Wrangler you're pRobably somewhere in the neighborhood of four thousand forty-five hundred pounds one and a half times that well an eight thousand pound winch should do you just fine now if you're getting into a newer four-door Wrangler or maybe you're adding a lot of heavy accessories again here comes that weight that we mentioned earlier right a heavy steel bumper big heavy off-road tires while you're you're adding a lot of that weight oh it's important to figure out how much weight you potentially have in on with the vehicle everything together you may be looking at something like a ten thousand pound winch and you know now with the newer Gladiators or with a lot of accessories added on overland vehicles with tents and racks and a lot of cargo well you may be looking at a 12 000 pound capacity winch to meet your needs and you can click the info button if you want to head over to quartertech.com and check out our full selection of available winches for the front of your Jeep from all the top manufacturers you can run through all the different features available and make the right selection for the winch that will fit your needs and the front of your Jeep vehicle now if you guys have any questions or comments about a winch or how to get it installed on your Jeep or even how to use that winch you can always do those for me down in the comment section below or contact us directly at any of the options on the screen of course if you haven't already and you like these videos do me a huge favor make sure you hit that thumbs up button don't forget to hit that subscribe button as well as the notification icon so be sure to catch all of our latest videos right here from the Quadratec Academy as well as plenty more. Until next time I'm Rob I'll see you guys out on the trail!