There is a lot winch manufacturing companies out there in the market today. This makes choosing the best among the best of the winches difficult and confusing. As such, it is very important to know what features to look for in the best winch to buy and to shop around very carefully. Winch manufacturers are spending sleepless nights trying to make high quality winches and to come up with great marketing strategies to sell their products. Some can be quite convincing, but in the end, if you are not quite careful, you will end up disappointed. So what special features are you supposed to look for in a winch before buying one? Whether it is an electric winch or hydraulic powered winch, you should look for the following features of the best winch to buy.
Speed and efficiency
A good winch should have good winching speed. This is about the two modes, the load mode and the no-load mode. The average rate when a winch is in no-load mode is supposed to be about 70 feet per minute. Anything below that is a total waste of your money. Your winch motor has to be efficient in the sense that it can be useful for you at all times and not fail due to low power. A spur gear drivetrain with the automatic braking system on the disk is also the best feature to look at. You might not like a winch with a good off-load speed but a poor disk breaking system.
Synthetic or Wire?
It doesn’t really matter. As long as the winch is submersible, waterproof, and has an automatic full-load cone braking system which can comfortably coordinate with the outside drum brakes, then if it is a synthetic fiber rope then be sure that heat dissipation won’t be too much thus, it will be safe from wear and tear. Some winches use copper wire instead of synthetic rope. That is stronger as well.
Load Capacity
This is about the amount of weight that you are going to use to lift your winch. The size of your truck as well matters a lot. If you will be using an ATV winch, then the average load capacity should not be less than 1500 Lbs. Or greater than 4000 lbs. If you have a big truck, then you need a winch that has at least a 6-hosepower series wound motor and a 160-pound rescue gear that can be fitted in front of it.
Warranty is also important just in case your winch malfunctions. Malfunctions are inevitable but if you have picked the best winch following the guidelines above, such things are unlikely possible. However, let’s just do a forecasting because nothing is perfect, right? With that being said, make sure that you buy a winch that has a full or lifetime warranty that you can use in case things go wrong.
Always stick to quality despite the temptation of cheap winches with convincing features but at the end of the day, you’ll just find out that they have poor quality and they lack efficiency. You need a winch that is going to serve you for a longer period of time and will not give you a headache over time.