robgendreau
Explorer
I've got a heavy vehicle like you do, in my case a van. You need some serious pulling power to move it. Especially if the frame is grounded. This means some serious stress on the parts you're pulliing, and remember, you want the winch or line to fail before your vehicle pulls apart. And consider that you might need a pulley, so you need an attachment for the end of the winch line. And you also need an attachment for a rescue strap (most use the receiver tube, but that's not gonna work if your winch is in there).
And then there's power: a 12k winch can pull over 400 amps. That can suck batteries dry pretty quickly. Not to mention the hassle of wiring it up to the rear. Sure, you could use a battery you take out of the camper. But if the winching doesn't go as planned, and you need to use the alternator's power, what then? I wired up a front/rear receiver mounted winch of much smaller size for a Chevy Tracker and even then it's welding cable, pricey connectors, big fuse or circuit breaker, etc.
When it came to mounting a 12k on the van, I just had a fabricator weld me a plate on my (also custom) front receiver crossbar, which is bolted and welded to the protruding frame rails. The winch essentially sits between the rails and above the receiver tube, which is unobstructed. We cut a nice hole in the stock bumper, so it's kinda like one of those hidden winch mounts that you can get with some trucks. Super strong in all directions. It might not cost you as much as you'd expect to have someone do that, or if you're confident in your welding chops doing it yourself (I'm not that good myself, especially for something this critical). In any case it was cheaper, stronger and lighter than most of the aftermarket bumpers I looked at, which were overkill for just getting a winch attachment.
That being said, sometimes I wonder why we mount winches on the front as SOP with vehicles where they are almost always used for recovery. Seems I wanna get unstuck and go back more often than unstuck and further up the road.
And then there's power: a 12k winch can pull over 400 amps. That can suck batteries dry pretty quickly. Not to mention the hassle of wiring it up to the rear. Sure, you could use a battery you take out of the camper. But if the winching doesn't go as planned, and you need to use the alternator's power, what then? I wired up a front/rear receiver mounted winch of much smaller size for a Chevy Tracker and even then it's welding cable, pricey connectors, big fuse or circuit breaker, etc.
When it came to mounting a 12k on the van, I just had a fabricator weld me a plate on my (also custom) front receiver crossbar, which is bolted and welded to the protruding frame rails. The winch essentially sits between the rails and above the receiver tube, which is unobstructed. We cut a nice hole in the stock bumper, so it's kinda like one of those hidden winch mounts that you can get with some trucks. Super strong in all directions. It might not cost you as much as you'd expect to have someone do that, or if you're confident in your welding chops doing it yourself (I'm not that good myself, especially for something this critical). In any case it was cheaper, stronger and lighter than most of the aftermarket bumpers I looked at, which were overkill for just getting a winch attachment.
That being said, sometimes I wonder why we mount winches on the front as SOP with vehicles where they are almost always used for recovery. Seems I wanna get unstuck and go back more often than unstuck and further up the road.