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I want to put a winch in my enclosed Trailex. Ideally, I need a platform that would raise it 6-10 inches. Trailex sells one but it takes up a lot of the nose space in the trailer so that doesn’t work. Anyone have any suggestions? I’m looking at a Superwinch S5500.
You can purchase 8" X 8" Square tubing (hot rolled or otherwise) at all sorts of material thicknesses/lengths. Any metal place in your town will have this in stock and sell you a piece. If the thickness is there, then you should not have to box the ends. If you can weld or drill, you can weld the studs, or nuts, and nicely bolt the winch to the square tubing and bolt the square tubing to the floor of the trailer. Build this strong and safe and not do mickey mouse stuff.
If you are buying a winch, buy something that has wireless control versus a tethered unit. You can always move this stuff to your next and longer trailer!
So what's the point of raising the winch? Pretty much all winches are floor mounted and pull vehicles of different heights just fine.
My winch is floor mounted and centered across the width of my enclosed trailer. I winch my track cars in without issue, and they have tow hooks at different heights and none of the front tow hooks are centered.
Off center winch will wind the wire rope hard against the fairlead on one side and can often jam up by putting all of the wire on one side of the drum. In my case one of the fairlead rollers locked up and the wire rope cut deep into it. All worked OK until the car got half way in and side force on the cable crammed it to one side. My quick solution was to get a ****** block and pull the cable to the winch center with a tie down onto the side D ring. Even with that the pit mounted winch would put a heavy load compressing the suspension as it got closer. It was a total PITA because wire rope sucks to pull by hand.
My final solution was a chunk of billet aluminum bolted to the front bulkhead and winch mounted on a left/right slider. Winch always at correct height and always centered on tow eye. Easy to do if you have big CNC milling machines. Get the radio control for the winch!
If I center the winch between the red lines pictured here, there isn't a ton of room between the winch and the tow hook when the car is all the way up. It seems that it would be fine until the car is almost all the way up, then it appears it would do as you say- put the rope all on one side.
Off center winch will wind the wire rope hard against the fairlead on one side and can often jam up by putting all of the wire on one side of the drum. In my case one of the fairlead rollers locked up and the wire rope cut deep into it. All worked OK until the car got half way in and side force on the cable crammed it to one side. My quick solution was to get a ****** block and pull the cable to the winch center with a tie down onto the side D ring. Even with that the pit mounted winch would put a heavy load compressing the suspension as it got closer. It was a total PITA because wire rope sucks to pull by hand.
My final solution was a chunk of billet aluminum bolted to the front bulkhead and winch mounted on a left/right slider. Winch always at correct height and always centered on tow eye. Easy to do if you have big CNC milling machines. Get the radio control for the winch!
Wire rope is terrible. Spend the money and buy a nice synthetic line. It will last a long time if kept inside an enclosed trailer.
06-17-2023, 03:23 PM
Winch platform
