Which winch ?

I use recovery winches for hauling my stationary engines up onto trailers.

principle we use is this.

the which is going to be pulling the load, X up an incline, pulling is much less load on the winch than actually lifting something, and pulling up a slope creates a simple Vector force.

so unless you end up a with a near vertical lifting scenario, you will only which effectively less than your total weight.

now that's just the weight of the engine considered.

next issue is rolling resistance. in a car this would be transmission and such like (particularly A/T) as well as any resistance generated by the ground your on. be it muddy, sandy, wet dry etc etc.

the latter is the biggest variable to towing. as on level smooth ground, a 2500lb winch would play with a jimny (and would theoretically be able to lift it, even though the manuals state you must not use these types of winches for lifting).

but as conditions deteriorate, you need to increase the size.

I use a 3500lb winch to recover my 3/4 tonne engines, and although it has a capacity 2 times that of the load, it sounds like it makes hard work of the haul up into the trailer.

so I would personally be looking at not less than 6000lb for a Jimny. beause although a Jimny is only 1T, some off road Jimny's have pretty big tyres on, which once stuck, will take some releasing. plenty of guys on here use bigger than that though, as they might be towing 2T defenders out..... haha.

Paul.

6000lb is considered the minimum on Jimny's although others do use smaller for green laning but I wouldn't recommend it.

However you can get perfectly good 9000lb winches for similar money.

From discussions on here it seems that a good budget winch is a Winchmax, middle of the road would be a Super Winch and the dogs danglies would be Goodwinch or Warn.

I would always argue that synthetic rope is safer and nicer to use but it's more expensive than cable. Cheap ropes are fine for green laning but may not be up to heavy recovery.

Kirkynut