OK - let's get the following points out of the way first:
- I should have bought a Warn
- You get what you pay for
- It may be cheap now but it'll break when you need it most and you'll be stuck costing you more money
- SCA only sell cheap Chinese junk
- I should have bought a Warn
Right. Down to business. So I now have this:
...sitting on my dining room table. $490 from the local SCA. It's the 12,000lb version, strung with synthetic rope. From the other thread ("tigerz11 on sale"), there seems good reason to believe that this is the same winch that BCF sell under their XTM brand. Following on from that, there's a good probability that this is the same winch that Tigerz11 sell under their brand. No way to tell for sure, and it's completely possible that the tigerz11 winches are made from better steel, have better gears, etc, while this one is made from jelly. If so, let me tell you it's at least VERY HEAVY jelly.
So far, my research on these things has indicated the following points:
- They're slow, based on the gearing needed to get the 12,000lb rating.
- They have a low duty cycle, especially with a lot of rope left on the drum.
- They need new quality marine grease as a priority.
- The solenoid pack isn't flash, and needs proper waterproofing to stay alive. Long term plan is to replace with solid-state pack.
- You need to really watch the heat build up, and only winch for short bursts.
All that, I can live with. There seem to be a few people out there (4WDA forums, AULRO, couple of other vehicle-specific forums) that have been running what looks to be the same winch for a few years now, generally with good results. These people seem to have been dishing out much more abuse than I'm likely to.
There is a lot of bad blood out there for SCA winches, but most of that seems to relate to the 9,500lb winch. There's some people who seem to have had these 12k ones fail, but they seem in the vast minority compared to the 9.5's. Heck - there's some people out there that bought the 12k version, were very happy with themselves, took it home, ready a forum thread about someone else not liking them, so took it straight back in it's box for a refund. To each their own, I guess.
I don't intend this to be a "should I take back my new winch" thread. I hope it doesn't degrade into a "should've bought a Warn, everything else is crap" / "Warn are overpriced" fight either. As noted above, I've already covered this for you.
What I do want to do with this is use it as a place to catalogue my adventures with this winch, starting with the purchase and the fitting. From there, we'll give it a few trial runs to see how it goes, and then load it up and test it properly somewhere. I'm hoping that so long as I stay within the parameters outlined, I will get a good run out of it. Time will tell.
Hopefully I'll get time this week to strip it down and re-grease, clock the gearbox housing, mount it to the car and get it all wired in. It'll probably be a very basic setup at first, but with time we'll relocate the control box and wire in some in-cab controls. For now though, I'll be happy to get it on the bar and turning.
I'll let you know how I get on!
Cheers!
Matto
