When looking at all the reasons you should upgrade your 4WD with a 12,000lb heavy hitting winch, you could easily think to yourself “I don’t really need one”, “the tracks I hit aren’t tough enough” but here are some awesome reasons why you should upgrade your 4WD with an Adventure Kings Winch for trouble free recoveries anywhere on the tracks!

Practicality

When driving offroad, there are plenty of reasons to use a winch to get your 4WD free from trouble. The golden rule of 4WDing, is to always bring recovery gear no matter how “easy” the track is supposed to be. By heading out unprepared, you risk leaving your vehicle wherever you get stuck, particularly if you head out alone!

By fitting a winch to your vehicle, you can simply flick a switch and slowly control your vehicle all the way out of the sticky stuff.

A winch means you can easily pull your 4WD free, even by yourself – the added benefit of a winch means that when you are hitting more popular tracks, you can even turn a tidy profit pulling people free, whilst they may not pay you in money, you’ll be rich in refreshing beverages!

A winch makes a massive difference when you hit the tracks and will become your go too recovery gear!

Installation

Installing an Adventure Kings winch takes just a couple of simple hand tools, and you don’t even need to solder any wires or crimp any terminals. A winch requires 4 bolts to fasten it into place and tightening nuts on the ring terminals on 5 separate screw posts.

Many winches on the market use a standard bolt pattern which is 10″ X 4.5″ (254mm X 114.3mm) which makes fitment extremely easily. The Domin8r X and Grande MKIII both also include all fitting fasteners as well as a hawse fairlead all they really require is to be bolted in.

Once the winch is bolted into place, you can mount your relay control box into a convenient location and run the wiring to the battery, and test everything to ensure it operates safely!

Essential Accessories

You cannot use a winch on its own, every winch recovery needs a handful of essential rated recovery accessories. Every recovery requires a handful of recovery accessories, just like the accessories Hercules Complete Recovery Kit. With a rated recovery kit, you can easily setup complex double line pull recoveries for up to 24,000lbs (nearly 11,000kg of pull) which is capable of pulling most 4WD’s free from nearly any situation offroad!

Whilst your winch is permanently fitted to your 4WD, you should always make sure to bring at least a rated tree trunk protector.

With many 4WD recovery kits on the market you can easily be thrown around by all the options on the table, when you choose a Hercules Recovery Kit you score excellent value for money and independently tested and rated equipment, that can allow you to help extricate your vehicle from many of the tricky and unforeseen obstacles on the tracks ahead.

Operation
In old days, operating a winch involved a lot of sweat, unless you were lucky enough to have a PTO winch fitted, taking advantage of the torque output from your engines gearbox, a PTO winch required engaging gear sets, and spooling a rope onto the drum. This whole process becomes a very complicated process when compared to the easy and simple push button pull you get with a reliable 12v winch.

With high current relay operation, the wired and wireless control of the 12v winch gives you stacks of pull at the flick of a switch both in and out, meaning you can even un-spool the synthetic winch cable by yourself and then jump in the cockpit and have full control of your winch recovery no matter where you end up getting stuck!

Expedient repair

When equipped with one of the best value 4WD winches, on the market – there is next to nothing that can hold you back on the tracks, however even when equipped with one of the most expensive winches on the market, driving through salty water and corrosive mud for years, you may have to use your head to perform a bush mechanic fix to get you home, so here are our two top tips for winching recovery emergencies where things just don’t go to plan.

The SPLICE of life

With the tremendous forces involved in winch recoveries, if you don’t take precautions and keep your winch rope clean and in the best condition ever you may encounter a rope snap. This can be catastrophic for your recovery, but if you have a winch rope it certainly pays to know how to perform a simple splice – you may not be the best at knots, but you should learn this tip, it’ll give you a professional looking repair and only takes a minute or two.

Start by overlapping, the two ends by approximately 30cm, pick a spot half way along the overlap (15cm or so) you can mark these locations with a sharpie or a marker.  To splice the winch cable you’ll need what is called a fid or a marlin spike this can be a ball point pen sticky taped to the end of the line. The idea with a splice is to weave the tail all the way through by zig zagging about 2 or 3 times to lock the 2 cables together and repeat with the other end. When you are done you need to bury both of the tails, inside the winch cable, this will act like one of those Chinese finger traps. A proper splice should be stronger than the original cable!

So if your winch cable fails in action, splice the 2 pieces back together and get your 4WD out of the muck ASAP!

HOTWIRING THE WINCH!

Sometimes with a lot of heavy usage through muddy water, or unmaintained through salty water a winches control box may end up causing you grief. If this is the case then you can take advantage of those old jumper leads you had laying around under your driver’s seat for years and power your winch directly from your battery, this obviously loses a lot of convenience of being able to control your winch remotely and if you are the one who is stuck you basically shouldn’t try this – However, if you are recovering your mates  this will get you out of trouble until you can get back home to replace the solenoid.

There are 4 separate terminals on your Adventure Kings Winch – the first is the “Ground” terminal, this earths directly to the negative terminal on your battery so you don’t need to connect your jumper lead yet. Then there is the armature terminal which is the red terminal this needs to be connected directly to the positive terminal on the battery – The next step is to jump between the armature terminal to either the yellow terminal or the black terminal to both, retract or unspool.

There are million reasons you need a winch on the tracks – but the insane price of an Adventure Kings winch is definitely one of the best reasons to upgrade your 4WD to be one of the most capable 4WD’s in your convoy!