Winches

[Bill]

He has been complaining about my boat trailer in his path, so my son cut down some trees and we parked the 4-LandRoverWheel trailer alongside his shed. We used the Disco, but had to use a ratchet hoist horizontally for part of the process where we simply ran out of space.

I've been trying to think, like another poster recently, of ways of simplifying the process. We have plenty of rope, some pulleys and there are still trees to attach to etc., but the trailer has no winch. The ground is pretty uneven - the trailer had only one wheel on the ground at one stage - and not terribly solid.

I've looked at ebay caravan movers that go in place of the jockey wheel, but don't think they would be safe to use, then saw towbar mounting winches.

An example is at goo.gl/QcCUg, but there are cheaper ones.

Has anyone experience of these? Is it just a matter of quickly popping it onto the towing ball (actually ours is a ball and pin type with attached and now bent steps), hooking up the power and using the remote control? The pictures seem to indicate they have rollers top and bottom where the wire rope comes out, but not at the sides, so will they only pull straight ahead?

There is no boat on the trailer, so it's not the full 3 tons we are trying to move

[Andy Dingley]

4 wheel trailers can be a pain to move, especially to steer them for compact parking. I've used one boat trailer (no names, unfortunately) that had a neat linkage where you could lift two of the wheels clear of the ground when unladen, making it much more manoeuvrable around a tight marina. (Big lever, over-centre spring) When the weight is on the trailer, they assume you're pulling it with a vehicle.

[Andy Dingley]

That's amazingly cheap. If I still had my Rangie, I'd have one at that price just on general principles.

That said though, these are winches primarily for self-recovering the vehicle they're on - usually meaning an on-axis pull. They _hate_ off- axis pulls - it screws up the cable lay onto the drum. Really don't do this - add a pulley block if you need to turn the pull sideways.

The best sort of winch, and a _much_ better sort of winch for forestry and similar stuff, where you're pulling something other than the vehicle they're on, is a vertical axis capstan winch (the cable is looped around the capstan, not wound onto a drum). This isn't fussy about its pull angle, it can use any length of cable, it's more controllable, it's much better for a controlled release and they're generally far more powerful. However they're also rare as hen's teeth, need a PTO connection and cost a fortune.

If this were me, I'd have a mains-powered drum winch (under the hundred quid) and it would have pre-made fasten-down points dotted around my yard, just scaff pipe sockets or bolted U bolts, set into concrete. I do have one of these, and the couple of places I have used it for winching previously I've made a decent job of the Rawlbolt bolt-downs, such that they're not protruding and I can go back and use them in the future, should I need them.

[Harry Bloomfield]

Bill laid this down on his screen :

Those hand cranked winches are quite effective, I use one myself for winching the caravan up the slope of the drive. I have it mounted on top of a short length of scaffold pole and have suitable holes drilled in the drive for the pole to drop into. It make short work of getting it pulled up off of the road.

[Bill]

In message , Harry Bloomfield writes

The trouble is that it's not my drive or garden that this trailer is in.

I've been on to Craddocks, who are selling the " Suitable for tow ball mount" winch that I referred to earlier, but they didn't seem to know whether it came with the towball fitting or not, just saying their winches were usually mounted on bumpers.

I'd still be interested to hear if anyone has used a winch mounted on the towball.

[Andy Dingley]

Dad had a thing for moving their caravan. The typical hand winch, mounted on a plate with a towball, so that the ball centre was in line with the winch drum. Clipped onto the caravan towbar. Fairly cheap, or easy to make.

Wasn't a _lot_ of use, as it needed something to attach the cable to. Anywhere we had this, there was probably a better way to move things.

BTW - never loop the winch cable round something to attach it, as this always puts kinks into your winding cable. It's much better to attach a separate strop, even just a loop of cable, and to put the wear into that.

[Zapp Brannigan]

Yes, and supplied by John Craddock too - a reputable Landie dealership.