You know the scenario. You trailered your rig to the trail, blew up the transmission, and can't get your 4x4 back on the trailer. It only weighs a couple of tons, but the ramps (if you remembered them) are uphill, and you're all alone. You'd use the winch on your rig to load up if you had one. What to do? Naturally, you should have a winch on the front of your 4x4 anyway, but what if you found a classic car or a prized Jeep hulk in a field, and it doesn't even run?
Warn has come to the rescue before, and now the company makes a specialty line of winches for trailers and the shop. The Warn Works series is designed specifically for this purpose and not as a self-recovery winch on a 4x4. Whether hauling an ATV into the bed of a pickup or loading a race car into a trailer, many people need a compact, powerful winch. In the old days we'd mount a Warn 8274 on the trailer, but the cost of this winch and the overkill it provided made that idea obsolete.
The new line of Warn Works winches fits the bill. While the 1,700-pound model is definitely good for some uses, we feel the 4,700-pound one is more applicable to our market. This unit can easily drag a car carcass onto a trailer. The three-stage planetary gear train and 1.9hp permanent magnet motor yanked our garbage around with ease. The separate mechanical and dynamic brake made it easy to off-load junk without brakes, an important safety factor around heavy-iron stuff.
Although a mounting plate is not required, we decided to use one to ease the installation on our new olive-drab, diamond-decked trailer. The winch comes with a hawse fairlead and a 12-foot remote control, and we mounted it in about 30 minutes. For more information, call 800/543-9276 or visit Warn online at www.warn.com.