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Land Rover Discovery 300tdi: An off-road conversion - Part 6
9th Sep 2009
ACCESSORIES
Winch
I always thought that a winch is not required. But when you are on your own of want to do a bit more than green-laning, it will give you a bit of peace of mind.
The choice of winches is very vast. I discarded the hydraulic and mechanical winches at the start as they are a bit more complicated to install. Then electric winches range from the cheapest, eBay-imported from China, etc to the full blown competition Gigglepin4x4. But we are talking about a 10-fold difference in price.
The Champion range that is distributed by Winch Solutions (www.winchsolutions.co.uk) sits in the middle range. It is cheap enough to be affordable by most off-road enthusiast, but reliable enough to get you out of a bad situation. At the end of the day, you may not need to use your winch very often, but if you do, it means that you really need it to work without failure.
The package is complete and contains everything you need for an easy installation.
This version is geared for a 12k pull, but has been fitted with the new 6.5hp Champion motor. It means –in theory- that even if the gearing is low, the more powerful motor will increase the speed.
The winch mounted easily in the tray of the D44 bumper ant I only had to do a small trim to the grill
The only change I made is the rope. I do intend to use the winch for small event or just as self recovery. The wire rope that is included with all winches works well, no question with that, but it is heavy, not that easy to manipulate and can be quite dangerous if it snaps.
I exchange the standard rope by a Dyneema rope from David Bowyer (www.dborc.co.uk/goodwinch). I chose an 11mm with a large competition hook for strength and ease of use.
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