Don't ignore everyone, buy a good winch!

Hey everyone! Last weekend I went to the dunes with a friend of mine, and surprise surprise, ended up getting stuck. Now I know I've heard it everywhere, don't buy a cheap winch. Unfortunately I am a student and just could not afford a proper warn at the time of building and I wanted to at least get one in there. I think I've had it maybe a bit less than 2 years. Everyone said it would fail, and I knew I was taking a risk by buying one of these off brand winches (engo). I figured I won't be using it much (and I didn't really) and thought well a cheap one is probably better than nothing for the time being, and it was, it worked fine a few times that I did use it (I think only 3 times).

Fast forward to last weekend, and I have my jeep out on the dunes just going through some side trails with my friend in the passenger seat, as he can't take his car out on the dunes (waiting for him to get a jeep already..), now this is a trip that we just do together without anyone else so it's just my jeep out there. Everything is going fine (I had just replaced my inner axle seals and had to take the center section out so I was eager to test it) until I try and go up a slightly off camber up hill trail with a big drop off on the other side. I ended up sliding off the trail right up against a tree and about a 9 foot drop down the other side to a big pit that there was no way I could get out of. Each movement I made essentially inched me further off the edge and so I figured I'll stop and winch back up to be safe. Hooked everything up, plugged in the remote, and.. a click.. The relay is actuating, I can hear it, but no movement at all. Suddenly it hit me that this wasn't going to be a 5 minute fix that I was hoping for.

In the end, I used my little fold up shovel (my friend used his flip flops) to dig our way out for about an hour, and my floor mats to get some decent traction, and my... glorified rope to keep me from sliding further down the side.

And of course what thread would be complete without pictures?



Next up on the list: A warn winch!

If you can't afford a new warn buy used and rebuild it

Warn all the way.............

Just make sure you get at least an M series winch from Warn. The VR series uses chinese parts, different gears/motors, solenoid instead of contactor, everything possible to cut costs to compete with the cheap winches on the market like the one you bought.

Glad you got out without any damage. Good advice.

Look on the bright side, at least you have a nice looking jeep to get unstuck [emoji6]

It's expensive to go cheap. At least you got your jeep safely extracted. The advice on rebuilding a used Warn is great. You can save a bunch of money and you'll know exactly what's inside your winch saving your ass. Thanks for sharing your hard-learned lesson.

Well that sucks. While I always try to encourage people to invest in a USA made WARN, I would never hope that someone with a China winch gets one that fails on them when they need it the most.