How Harbor Freight saved my TJ

Say what you want about HF, but for $599 before any 10-20% coupons, this winch is a friggin good deal.

Very long story, short.
Deep water bad, Chinese Bandland winch good.
p.s. I had HF's Chicago Electric winch years ago and it worked great. Made it to the top three in the old Winches in Hell shootout.

http://www.moabjeeper.com/articles/general/listing.cfm?articleID=353

Great story, love your positive attitude.

Back in roughly 2008, my grandfather had a motorhome and had bought the 05 TJ in my profile pic <— to tow behind it so he could explore the backcountry and jeep trials up there. He had a local shop put Auburn Gear ECTED limited slip lockers in the jeep. He mounted a hi-lift jack to the rear bumper, and purchased a 4,500lb electric winch from harbor freight. it was one of the earliest harbor freight winches they sold, and seems to be a rebadged ramsey winch. he made a winch plate out of what appears to be a piece of a frame rail or something. its damn heavy.

anyways so he's up in Colorado on Imogene pass, and puts a front tire off the trail a bit. when he turned the wheel and tried to reverse, the whole thing went over the side and rolled a couple times before stopping up against a tree. He winched the jeep back up onto the trail and drove down into Telluride. When he got down close to town, he parked somewhere and used the hi-lift to bend the front fenders back up so the tires wouldn't rub so he could go back to wherever they were camping. He towed it back to Texas, and while the soft top was still all there, it was pretty beat, so he found a hard top for sale locally and swapped it over.

you can see how the fenders are kinda sad looking in the pic below, along with the dents in the hood and a-pillars. This was from when I inherited it after he passed in 2023.



So, yeah I'd say HF winches are reliable enough

Rickstar321 said:

I think what blew me away the most about what happened is that it was about 3' under water, and the winch remote was full of water, I had to shake it out... and it still blue toothed to the remote and functioned... and is STILL working. I wish I would have had my micro disk in my dash cam... I had taken it out to download some wheeling we had done the week before... that would have been a great video.

Click to expand...

Fresh water, minus an electrolyte like salt, has a relatively high resistance compared to the contactors in the solenoids. People like to bag on the badlands and smittybilt winches, but they are decent at waterproofing the electronics in order to last.