Why not a hydraulic winch?

[Philberto]

Hey everybody,

I was over on ExPo, and wondered to myself, if we are truly concerned with reliability and are going to have permanently-mounted winches anyways, why not go with a hydraulic winch setup? The cost is comparable, and there's no need to fuss with large amounts of electrical current in a potentially watery situation. I was looking at the Mile Marker H9000 as an example.

[The Roadie]

Good for rock racers, IIRC. Bad if your engine is flooded out or you're at a 45 degree angle and can't run the engine to run the pump, where 12V works just fine under water. Until the battery is drained, then you get a jump from a buddies battery that's above water. I did a 45 degree hill climb in Moab and the oil pressure went away halfway up. A risk I never quantified before.

[Philberto]

Of course, the oil pressure situation could possibly be rectified by modifying the oil pan and/or the oil pickup tube...

And if you really wanted to, you could convert to a dry-sump system for relatively minimal cost. Something to keep in mind for rock-crawlers like yourself.

OT, you sent me a PM, but then deleted it prior to me being able to read it.

[foosh]

Hmm... i really like it, i just doubt that our powersteering pump would produce enough line pressure to power it for long, notice they used a fullsize chevy for the test.

[teebes]

Nothing stopping you from going hydraulic, other than time, money, etc Seeing more 'real' setups will always help folks decide down the road.

To me, batteries are a lot easier to replace or have secondary units available incase they fail. Pumps, not so much.

As Foosh mentioned, what kind of flow is needed on the pump side?

[Philberto]

Nothing stopping you from going hydraulic, other than time, money, etc Seeing more 'real' setups will always help folks decide down the road.

To me, batteries are a lot easier to replace or have secondary units available incase they fail. Pumps, not so much.

As Foosh mentioned, what kind of flow is needed on the pump side?

3.5GPM @ 1500PSI

Now to find out what the specs on our power steering pump are. And apparently the EXT and v8 models have a different power steering pump than the standard wheelbase.

-edit: Hey Bill, don't you have the contact info for the compnine guy? Maybe he could help us out!