I have a 4500 lb. Champion
winch I bought a couple months ago to put on my gooseneck. Its smallish but, I put a snatchblock on it from the very beginning and its never had a problem dragging anything onto the trailer, have picked up 4,100 lb cars with all 4's locked up and it didn't care one bit. The snatchblock doubles the power so its essentially 9,000 lbs rating now. This trailer came with a winch but it was a cheesy looking winch probably 2,000 lbs. So I am swapping mine out for it.
Question: Where at on the trailer is your winch mounted? This guy had a auto repair shop and used it to tow customers vehicles, he tried a few different ways of mounting winch:
First on the front of the deck (on the stationary portion) but the cable going over the front of the tilted section tried to pull the deck back down while loading
Second on the front of the tilt section, but the weight of the winch didn't allow the bed to tilt well (looked like might not pull car forward enough mounted there anyway)
Third is its current configuration: he built a heavy frame at the front of the trailer that holds the winch up high enough that the cable does not touch the bed when its tilted, so it pulls upward instead of across the top of the deck.
I should be OK with that setup except with my gooseneck i'd chain the rear of a car and use the winch to secure the front, out of laziness basically as it avoided getting 2nd chain and boomer out since the winch is already hooked up anyway. But with this trailer I can't use the winch to secure the front of the car because when the deck levels out the winch will be pulling upward on the car instead of downward so that won't help secure the car to the trailer. Not a big huge deal but wish I could find a good solution to the whole deal...
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