Winch or not ?

[Spjnr]

It seems to me that everybody in UK gets the EU version. I guess thats hard...

Our pedestrian safety standards are the same as EU. so yes this is what we'll get.

easy solution would be just leave the cover off while your winching etc

 

[DCPU]

Or maybe following today's speech, “by the end of the year all EU red-tape will be consigned to history”, we can all have steel bumpers?

 

[emax]

> by the end of the year all EU red-tape will be consigned to history

To nice a dream.

 

[emax]

Disadvantages:
...

What other issues/factors have I missed in this assessment.

Where to carry?

If inside the car, I wouldn't like a 35 Kg missile lying around behind me. In particular not off road but neither at 130 Kmh on the motorway. Or you have a rig to fit it in - as large as a fridge ....

And having it mounted outside is not an option on holiday trips where you drive 1000 Km on the Autobahn and let your car on a parking area if you go for lunch or dinner.

 

[DedkovCZE]

Well, you can get steel bumper without bars to Toyota LC J7 in my country therefore they will be able to push thru steel bumper for IG.

 

[CountyV8]

Hi Just got this from Ineos this makes it impossible to use the winch practically in the UK you host can\t keep unscrewing it every time you need to use it?
Hi Jon,

Thank you very much for contacting INEOS Automotive today, it was great speaking to you.


We do indeed have the number-plate flip up winch. But unfortunately they can only be added to metal bumpers and due to the UK having strict pedestrian safety laws they are not allowed in the UK. It will be like the plastic cover that you saw on the latest tour. I do apologize as I know that this is not the answer you were hoping for.







Please do not hesitate to contact us if you need any further assistance.

Thanks,

Megan

INEOS Grenadier Customer Service

 

[ECrider]

Not ideal CV8 but I reckon the aftermarket will come up with something more practical and hardy. We don't want the front falling off everytime!

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

To clarify a couple of reasons for my choice.

1. 90% of the time I will be driving to work, shops, restaurants, family homes on tar roads so winch will be at home, in the shed, wrapped in plastic.
2. Anytime I know I might be going off-road I will take it with me.
3. It will be inside the back of the vehicle and only taken out when required, or when the terrain gets to the point that it is likely to be required. No point trying to install it when the socket and hitch are under water/mud.
4. As others have pointed out the winches are rarely/not usually in a straight line, but they are also not always in front of the vehicle.
5. Often it is better to recover a vehicle back the way it came, as you know what is there, and the obstacle is in front of the vehicle.
6. Typically a winch can be used to assist the vehicle to drive out by itself, not take the whole load.
7. A winch is only one component of a recovery kit
8. Often the vehicle with the winch is pulling out another vehicle. Often they need to turn around on the track as the vehicle was behind them. This is not always possible.
9. The ability to mount the winch on the front or the rear makes it more versatile to me, but I could be wrong.
10. 4WD's look more manly with a winch permanently mounted to the front so I will miss out on that part.
11. Often the time comes to use the winch only to find it doesn't work as it hasn't been maintained and it is sitting on the front of the vehicle getting hammered by rain, hail snow, mud, dust and 40 Million bugs. Plus the odd kangaroo.
12. I wonder if you could make up an extension for the cable enabling it to be temporarily mounted on the tow hitch of a nearby vehicle 5 or 10 metres away???

That makes perfect sense to me Dave. If I had the same use case as you have, I would go with a portable also. The biggest difference for me is on point 5 - anytime I've needed to winch, it's been either on a return trip (i.e. I have been in the bush and am on my way home, and don't want to turn around in that case and go further into the bush) or on a through trip (where I would not have the time or fuel to turn around) so for me, going through was the best option and often is. That's not true for everyone though.

#3 is an excellent point, but reminds me of another "pro" with a permanently mounted wich, and that is it's not always safe/easy to lug around 50kgs or more of winch, trying to line up the reciever, etc. This is exacerbated by bad weather, fatigue, and many other factors. But, you are already spot on with the approach to controlling that - do it before you need to, which is sound advice.

As for 10, perhaps if you grow a beard or get some aggressive tattoos you can compensate? Or maybe a set of "Truck Nuts" for your Grenadier? (In case it's not clear, I am kidding -- I chuckled at your comments of missing out on that part )

For number 11, I consider winch maintenance part of routine care and feeding. Every oil change at least - that's 5k kms for me - I spool out the winch and clean it up. It still looks pretty rough, but mechanically it's immaculate.

As I said I think for the way you describe you using the Grenadier, a receiver mount makes sense. The OP was looking at a bit more flexibility in his use case, so I still think a permanent mount is the way to go for him, but for a lot of grenadier owners, I think there will be a $4k (or whatever) paperweight off the front of their rigs that goes unused for most of their time owning it.

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

Why is it more sets of your equipment with a manual winch?

With regard to "winch assistance over a distance of several kilometers of mud up a very steep mountain trail" ~ what is the duty cycle of your winch?

Good questions!

More sets - I mean you have to set the equipment more times, and that is more work. Typically, manual winches will have a shorter cable than powered ones for both space and weight savings. This means that you're only doing, for example, a 10 foot pull each time, rather than a potentially much longer one with a powered winch equipped with 50+ feet of cable. Additionally, even if you do have good long cables, each time you do a reset of the equipment, you are moving the heavy bit -- the manual winch itself -- and not just the shackle on the end of the cable. This is more work. More work in an already stressful situation is a recipe for accidents and missteps and comes with a greater risk of injury. I am deadly serious about recovery -- I'd rather walk away from my $100k Grenadier in the middle of the bush than injure myself trying to recover it. I can always get another grenadier. I can't get a new limb or life!

I don't know the duty cycle of my specific winch - it's very old and it's been years since I've known all the specs - but what I do know is that it has a better duty cycle than I do, so it's good enough for me By that I mean, by the time I set up, winch, and get setup to winch again, I'm almost always taking a few breaks to catch my breath and really make sure that I'm being smart and safe about it. On occasion, I've even had help - one person setting, one person operating, so our resets are much faster -- and even then, I've never run into a problem with the duty cycle on my winch. It's a good quality winch though -- Warn -- some of the more budget options this might be a much bigger issue.

 

[painter]

Did you have time to slip into a phone booth to change your clothes?
Honestly I saw a similar thing happen in Victoria when a bunch of tourists drove up a steep tar road when it had just started snowing.

Yeah I was pretty pleased with myself. And because I was so smart I chained up the 4 tires, then proceeded to cut a front brake brake hose turning around, had to drive down the mtn in low gear and since it was a holiday weekend and the stores were closed, drove 700 km home very early the next am with 3 wheel brakes (!)

Yup, a regular superhero

 

[ECrider]

If you cut a brake hose would that not render all brakes useless, as in no pressure in the system or did you seal it off somehow?

 

[AZGrenadier]

How often are you using your winch that you are worried about removing the plastic cover? Wouldn’t you just remove it when you need it and then leave off for the rest of the trip?

 

[ChasingOurTrunks]

I wonder about the winch kit for the plastic bumper - that might give me pause until I knew that I could re-fit the winch differently (though the advantages of warranty and wiring are still very compelling). My reasoning is that the kinds of environments wherein I would need a winch are also the environments where an animal strike is the most significant risk to safety/a successful trip, and the plastic bumper is inadequate to protect against that. Therefore, if I had to go with the plastic bumper, I'd be replacing the bumper anyway with something from ARB or similarly engineered steel or aluminum bar with a decent hoop to protect the radiator, so I'd want to be sure its easy to swap the winch over before fully committing to the purchase (i.e. the wiring is great, but will it be long enough to mount the winch a bit further out on a steel bumper, given how recessed the winch is in the plastic bumper?)

If I can get a steel bumper from factory (which I can in my market, I think), I'm hopeful that it will have a full hoop or that the Aftermarket will provide one.

 

[CountyV8]

How did they get this past TUV then

 

[bemax]

How did they get this past TUV then

Prototyp ?

 

[CountyV8]

Prototyp ?

Poss but why show it al over the place this is from Red winches

 

[painter]

If you cut a brake hose would that not render all brakes useless, as in no pressure in the system or did you seal it off somehow?

Sealed it off with a spare bolt and a hose clamp. Though I've seen just a crimp or clamp (locking pliers) on the hard line/pipe. Think I had some extra brake fluid too but if caught early there should still be enough in the brake master cylinder.

As I understand it for safety cars will have a split circuit system so if one fails somewhere the second can still stop the vehicle. Abs prob also helps.

I wrote 3 wheel brakes but it might have been 2. Perhaps diagonally, front left and rear right. Pulled left if I braked hard.

Sounds scary but wasn't that bad. Hyper milled on the way back, gearing down and rarely needed the brakes.

 

[painter]

If I can get a steel bumper from factory (which I can in my market, I think), I'm hopeful that it will have a full hoop or that the Aftermarket will provide one.

Let's hope for a steel bumper. If not at worst we should be able to buy oem from Oz (free trade agreement). If doing so I'd consider the oem roo bar.

 

[DCPU]

Good questions!

More sets - I mean you have to set the equipment more times, and that is more work. Typically, manual winches will have a shorter cable than powered ones for both space and weight savings. This means that you're only doing, for example, a 10 foot pull each time, rather than a potentially much longer one with a powered winch equipped with 50+ feet of cable. Additionally, even if you do have good long cables, each time you do a reset of the equipment, you are moving the heavy bit -- the manual winch itself -- and not just the shackle on the end of the cable. This is more work.

I'm not sure what manual winches have a 10 foot pull each time? A hi lift jack, pressed into use, might give you half that but the particular instance of the Grenadier integrated winch vs a "normal" manual winch then we are talking 15m vs 20m.

Why you would need to move the heavy bit. It works equally well attached at the vehicle end, moves with the vehicle and there's only the same rope/kit to pay out on each reset.

 

[DCPU]

Hi Just got this from Ineos this makes it impossible to use the winch practically in the UK you host can\t keep unscrewing it every time you need to use it?

"Impossible"?

That seems a bit of a stretch.

With some quick release fasteners, you are talking less than 5 seconds to remove/replace...