The Wheel Winch

[Crikeymike]

What if the tire is under water?

Probably about as bad as if your winch is in the mud or under water.

 

[cruiseroutfit]

And a frame mounted winch is putting strains on a frame that was never designed or intended to withstand those forces in ANY direction...

I wouldn't be so definitive. Many Toyota vehicles came (come) with OE winch applications, designed by Toyota engineers to be mounted on the OE frames, the 40, 55, 60, 62 & 80 Series for example. I firmly believe the potential damage by using such a device on a standard Toyota axle (the vehicles I'm familiar with) for outweighs any damage that could result by using a frame mounted winch under the same winching scenarios, both from my engineering background and my personal experiences with winch recovery.

That's not to say at all that it isn't a useful product, I think it would be neat to use in some circumstances and no doubt there could be times it would be more practical to use over a standard frame mounted winch. It is pricey, more than a new Warn for example, but for the solo traveler it could be a cheap price to pay. (~$800 AUD for the wheel winch)

 

[Zorro]

On an open diff truck, it's gotta be sketchy. You lose traction on the opposite wheel, and your "winch" is useless.

 

[Gone2Baja]

I remember seeing these in old off road magazines, I can't believe they're still around!

 

[scarysharkface]

Tower crews have used a variation of that for years, though rare these days.

 

[Snagger]

I don't see how the forces imparted on the axle differ from driving with good grip on one wheel and little on the other (using diff lock, traction control or whatever to keep drive going to the gripping wheel). Given that it would be done with low throttle settings in a low gear, I think it would put less strain on the axle than scrabbling around at high throttle settings with rapidly varying traction.

 

[Antichrist]

I could see this on an open diff truck and it just sits there with the other wheels spinning

No. The reason a wheel spins in an open diff is that there's no traction for it (compared to the opposite wheel). With a wheel winch on both wheels they'll both have more or less the same amount of "traction" the whole way.

 

[Metcalf]

This is old school! There is a vid of a model T using something like this...

I did something like this on a fire engine once to get unstuck. I had a few hundred feet of inch and a half hose with the end wrapped and tied between the rear dual wheels. It worked, but it took a few hours once unstuck to get the hose out from between the duals with all the mud! Shhhhh....don't tell anyone! I tied off to about 10 big sage brush by looping the hose around the bases.....the first few pulled out but it held in the long run. Its always funny what you can come up with when you HAVE to. The engine was a type 6 BLM engine...basically a 13,000 lb F450.