For someone so familiar with winches you missed some key pieces of information. For the winch to twist there had to be flex in the mounting plate on the bumper. I know of no recovery winch including Warn that can survive flex in the mounting plate. Didn't you fry a Warn in the same video? You were trying to pull an Aspen stump which you admitted to being unfamiliar with. Anchored a 9,000lb truck with a tractor which together exceeds the load ratings of both winches you broke. For all intents and purposes you connected two immovable objects to each end and pushed both winches to failure. Difference between the two was the Harbor Frieght was strong enough to find the weak point in that bumper causing it to flex. It doesn't take much flex to snap those die cast covers. Sorry but this looks more like a user error/too weak of a mount issue rather than a winch failure to me.
What does “Manly Manners” have to say about a man who refuses to accept responsibility when he’s wrong? Clearly both winches were abused to the point of failure in a task neither could, or was meant to accomplish.
Your comment would first need to demonstrate that he's wrong before you extrapolate on what he should do when he is. You seem to have skipped over that step, but that's the most critical one. It seems to me that his point is: if the task was too much, then the winch should have just cut off (like the warn presumably does?) instead of self destructing? That seems like a very fair point to me, but I know little about winches. It's a bit off color to insult his character based on him not doing something when he's wrong, when he's not even wrong (or at the very least you haven't shown him to be). -1 to you, sir.
@@darkwater482 "He knows it even if you don’t" provide evidence for this statement. Oh, you can't. Shocker. This is objectionable (calls for speculation). "The title of the original video was “This was dangerous…& dumb”." Right, pulling the stump out. That has nothing to do with Warn being a higher quality tool than harbor freights line and is a non sequitur designed to seem like you're making a good point. You aren't.
@@darkwater482 neither the harbor freight or Warne is made to pull stumps out of the ground. If he was winching himself or another vehicle out of mud or snow, I think the harbor freight would have been fine.
@@user-nh3gu1ge3d If you know little about winches then why are you injecting yourself into a conversation about winches? The failure was a mounting point failure because of flexing and the reviewer is placing the blame on the winch.
@@andrewk8636 That was exactly what I was thinking. If it the winch was bolted to something stout enough it shouldn't have been able to twist like that. I would look for a new winch mount before I toasted a Warn winch too. Any winch that was allowed to flex like that would fail in my opinion.
Exactly, he’s a 🤡 He didn’t have it mounted properly and it when the mounting twisted the winch twisted. He didn’t explain anything and he’s very arrogant!
Exactly, he just didnt get paid what he expected from Harbor Freight so he bashed them and glazed over the part where his mounting bolt broke which caused the housing to break. His arrogance showed in the end when he said, "What do I know, I'm just a multi million dollar corporation." You know how to manipulate the truth to support your personal narrative on internet videos. That's what you know. Very biased and un ethical to not show pictures and videos of your mount breaking then you purposing abusing the winch just because harbor freight didnt pay you what you wanted.
It looks like to me, the Winch mount failed letting the winch body twist causing the housing to break apart. If that's the case, it is the fault of the bumper / winch mount that caused the failure...
Propulsion Engineer here: There appears to be significant flex in the mounting plate. Whether that led to the failure is unknown. Echoing the statements of many before me, the Apex winch was exposed to loads well beyond its capacity. Stating many times over that you do not have experience with Aspens, some prep work and research would have better aided you in its removal. What I do agree with is the overall build quality of the winch should reviewed. Places where thermal energy and Joule heating are present should have preventative measures in place to prevent ignition or thermal overload. The components around any electrical connection under load should exceed the NFPA for plastics and be self extinguishing, or simply be made of non-carbon material. I would to have loved to have seen this load with a tension gauge. I willing wager you doubled its capacity. Love to see a Warn / Apex face off.
@@thetzarofthemountain8222 he absolutely did. Its unfair to blame a company that gave him free equipment, abuse it then blame it on faulty build. There are countless products that, if tested to catastrophic failure, will create similar results. Take note: Cody has not liked one reply to this video yet.
The winches in the video was only use up ro their rated load. The Warn shut off due to the thermal switch but did fry the relay, which is a problem, but a smaller issue. While the HF destoryed itself before reaching its thermal limit.
@@michaelarnold2294 I’ve made a couple of comments on this and I wouldn’t dare hook my 16K Warn up to that stump. I’m quite sure I would have some sort of damage, I’ve seen it happen to many times on Jeep’s and trucks over the last 5 decades. All different makes and sizes of winches.
@@michaelarnold2294 Im pretty sure there is information in that winch manual if it is equiped with thermal switch or not. If it does not have this feature it was 100% operator fault for not reading instructions and pushing the tool far beyond what it was designed for.
@@supersami7748 yeah, I assume your winch has been used many times? Each winch has a fatigue limit from repeated loading and unloading. Itd definetly tax the winch whem pulling max capacity but the warn should be rated at a high fatigue count to not fail during use. They probably can handle millions of cycles up to its max load. Though it is posisble to abuse them before causing hidden damage that will get exposed.
@@michaelarnold2294 He literally admitted in the original video that he "might have fried the relays" on the Warn, so yes it did fail and did not shut off to prevent catastrophic failure. Sure it might not have been an actual structural failure like the Harbor Freight, but any product is bound to break if you pull four times the advertised max weight, especially if it's not fastened correctly (which seems to have been the case). The fact that HF replaced it is amazing given the user-side abuse.
First off I have been in felling trees and removing stumps for over 30 years. Being that he was been with the forestry service, you would think he would know the dynamics of a stump. Look at the size of the stump. The root system is substantial. To think any normal winch would pull that out, even with a snatch block, is absolutely insane. Yes the winch failed, but the true failure here was Wranglestar. The misuse and abuse of this winch is the true failure. There are so many who use these winches with out a failure like this. He purposefully put that winch in a position to fail. To say he isn't hating on Harbor Freight is a joke, that's all I hear. Listen to his words, he is prejudice against HF from the get go, even tho he wants his viewers to think otherwise. I have read the comments and I want to see a him put one of his Warn winch's on that stump and do a continuous pull till it dies.
Yes Jason you are right on the money with this and for someone who professes to know everything he is sorely lacking in common sense. Abusing equipment is the sign of a person with low IQ~!! He got the damn winch for Free and then cusses it like he used rent money to buy it~! 💩💩💩
You are so right about this dude and I quit watching him years ago due to his inflated ego and negativity. Harbor Freight gives this creep a "Free" winch and then he abuses it to the max and when it fails he cusses it~! Karma is warming up for this guy and pay backs are a real Bitch~!!
I would agree BUT he has an example of a product that works well even if it isn't being used as intended: Warn winches. Warn has never failed him in this way and he's been using them HIS WHOLE LIFE. Harbor Freight specifically offered this product as an economically viable replacement for the Warn. It did not replace the Warn so clearly the Warn is the more quality and most versatile product. Admittedly, it would have assisted his point if he actually showed the Warn pull out the stump after the HF failed... so there is a valid argument that he's just shilling for WARN because he never corroborated his claims about WARN but assuming his claims are true then the HF is an inferior product and his gripes about it are legitimate because the WARN and the HF were made for the exact same purpose and yet the WARN, even though it isn't made for pulling stumps, does so successfully.
Give me a break. This isn't the winches fault this is an installation fault. You pushed things far passed design limits. Your bumper flexed and put loads on the winch in ways it's not meant to be loaded. Your video quality has took a drastic dive.
I'm still gonna go with Operator Error. I don't care what someone has done to whatever with any winch, they're not meant for trying to pull stumps. Especially when you don't bother to dig them first.
@Sven3xs That street truck was attached to a farm tractor and that stump was NOT coming out of the ground with ANY winch unless it has been compromised with digging or cutting roots. What should have happened was a thermal overload shut the winch down before it self destructed. If the winch had not been the weak link it would have bent the frame on that Ford truck. There always has to be a weak link to protect against catastrophic damage.
@@jaytrock3217 Exactly, that stump did not budge at all and He was about to pull that truck in two. Hooking it to a tractor only meant something was going to get damaged.
While it's debatable whether Harbor is at fault or not, your statement (winching 20,000+ lbs with a 12,000lb winch) is weak. The load the winch experience never exceeded 12,000lb, or less if the line still had multiple wraps on the spool. Winches should be capable to run up to their stall load without breaking.
@@gregparrott have you ever tried to pull a stump out of the ground? I've popped wheelies in a mini excavator trying to pull up stumps before, though I'm far from an expert in their use, stumps don't like to leave the ground though.
Sorry, Matt's off-road, Cassey Ladelle FAB Rats and others have used this winch in way more severe and realistic situations without failure, this is operator error, based on your video I just went and bought one
I mean honestly, it's videos like this... The reason why I take alot of what you say, the positions you hold and the products you push with a grain of salt. I used to think you were a solid source of info but every other video just reinforces that you're at all the expert at things you think or sale yourself to be. This video wasn't fair to Harbor Freight and chock full of so many plot-holes. You knew damn well that winch (any winch of that rating) would find this job impossible. "No I didn't. No I didn't." Yes you did, Cody. Yes you did.
Well said this was eye opening, everyone's human amd makes mistakes but as you said I'm going to be watching with a grain of salt from now on, hope this was just a slip and I don't see much more of it.
Pulling a stump was stubbornness and ego for sure, we all have that in us tho. But, a simple shutoff mechanism is something a cheap brand should not cheap out on.
I don't get it. The Warn failed in the same video, how can he say he won't use a HF winch and is going back to Warn when it also failed. The Warn was only a 9,000 lb winch, sure, but he said he might have fried the relays. They both would have left you stranded, stranded from pulling your tank out of the ditch.
Hes a warn brand snob. Watch his unboxing video of the apex winch. He litterally bitches about the aluminum hawse having "badlands" cast into it because "maybe people dont want to advertise" lol.
He can be fun to watch but this is not the channel for solid unbiased reviews of anything. Do your homework. Also, see if Project Farm has done a review of anything in which you may be interested.
@@chadschafer1723 Oh, I 100% agree. And I believe that the failure was because the mount flexed, when it needs to be rigid for this design. That winch can only twist like that, if the mount it is on, is also twisting. That said, there is a point about having internal safeties to prevent catastrophic failure.
I have used Warn winches the biggest they got and I have broken them also used winches on trucks better specially-designed for oilfield operation and broken them and I've also used winches on recovery trucks for the towing industry and have broken them also the problem is Cody you didn't do no prep work on that stump to remove it from the ground and being a man that lives in the woods you should have knew better I've seen recovery lines that they use in the logging industry braking bringing logs up from bottom to landings if a person from central USA can see u failed to do prep work first dont blaim the equipment when it fails it all falls on u the operator not the equipment
Nope. It shouldn't break. It would be able to pull up until a thermal cut off. You claim to have "broken them," implying you've broken MULTIPLE warn winches, and I just think you're full of it. Or your definition of broken is burnt out relays, and not sheared bolts and cracked housing. Either way, it should be able to pull without breaking, even against an immovable object. There is absolutely no way to know when to stop of you're pulling too much. The stupidity of the "sTuMp pReP wOrK" argument is weak. Nothing you do, after the line leaves the winch, will alter the output force generated by the winch. You can put 100 pulleys on the line and it wouldn't change the amount of force on the winch when attached to the stationary object.
Well all i know is Cody and Jack broke the winch trying to yank a ash tree stump out of ground without doing any prep work on stump also if u look at way they where set up to do it u wonder why cable didnt snap bc if u trying to pull more then what winch is rated for ur going to break things and betting Cody messed up his fancy bumper on truck bc winch twisted on support platform he had it mounted on to i would say also 99.9% of winch have over load protection system built into them inless u disable it and i am betting Cody did that bc their is no way it twisted on its own and if it would have twisted it would have been on gear side not mtor side
As an engineer I'm really proud of the comment section here. After watching the video and disagreeing with it, I was nervous to move over to the comment section and potentially see people agree and laugh/bash at the "poor quality" winch. I really wish RU-vid enables the Dislike button again. It would put this video in its rightful place with its misinformation.
I have the browser add-on that brings back the dislike button and surprisingly, the dislike ratio isn't that bad on this video (~2k dislikes to 10k likes). Many of his other videos have way worse ratios
@@xntumrfo9ivrnwf the thing is, many people stopped hitting the dislike button because they think it is pointless. Which was their whole idea behind it. But the creator can still see it either way.
@@arnold8746 well the other benefit (before they were taken away unless you have an add-on), is it quickly showed new people that something about the video was wrong, maybe even dangerous.
Every single commenter can see it was a bias video... Went above and beyond intended use to attempt to prove his bias as well without and side by side comparison
I was on the fence about the Apex 12k winch, but this video has convinced me that it'll do the job if used properly. It's probably worth the $600 compared to an $1800 Warn. If I need to pull stumps, I'll use my backhoe to break up the ground, then cut up the roots before I hook up the winch and start pulling orthogonal to the stump.
For someone who claims to be so very knowledgeable about forestry, you’d think you’d have the foresight to atleast partially dig up one of the most heavily rooted trees in the world.
For real, on one of our logging tracks we cleared the grading company was right on our heals stumping as we went, they had a komatsu 390 and a 490 doing the stumping and if you are familiar with a 490, that is a dang machine right there! And like you said, dig around the stump first, even as big as that 490 is he still had to dig around the stump to pull them up, that monster still couldn't just reach out and snatch them out of the ground, not even 12-14 inch stuff
Theres a reason we can use trees as anchor points to help us winch out of a ditch. It's the same reason both winches failed in the last video. Just my 2 cents.
@@RogueShadowTCN ... Yeah, but to be honest - 1/3 the Price, you've a hard plastic Case ... At some point you've to think for yourself. I was like "Wtf?" when he simple tried to completly pull out the tree stomp without anything of preperation from a dry and obviously dense ground. That was basically set to fail.
@@StevenAndrews it isn't being ripped on for not being able to pull enough. Fire is not an acceptable failure mode. The motor should stop spinning first, the housing wasn't strong enough for the motor. That's a design problem.
Cody, I’ve been watching for a long time and respect your opinion on most things but I think you may be missing the mark on this one. As others have said that tree wasn’t coming out with any winch because of the root system. And with a failure like that I would look at the mounting strategy of the winch more than the winch itself. I believe it may be possible that the winch was operating within its normal limits but because the truck was so rigid because of its size and the tines on the tractor being dug in coupled with the mechanical advantage of the winch rope and snatch block you may have actually had a failure of the bumper. I believe with it being aluminum it may have flexed resulting in the situation you find yourself in now. I have a badlands winch and while I definitely do not have the experience you do with winching this sort of failure in my opinion cannot he fully attributed to the winch. Just food for thought. Have a great day.
1 point I'd like to make is that he broke boke the harbor freight and the warn winch. The Warn which just burned up the relays, the Badland unit snapped in half. Pretty major quality difference there I think.
He anchored the truck. Meaning he probably sketched the frame. Never do that on a new truck. 2nd for be into forestry so much. Can't believe he doesn't know how the Aspen root structure is. Never going to be able to winch it out. Maybe with a tank recover vehicle. Notice how the Harbor Freight winch doesn't have a bottom. That means the winch depends on a good mount and the fairlead not to twist. I think one of the anchor bolts on the mount snapped. If you look at the video and listen at 0:40 something happens before you the twist of the winch.
@@treywright3591 the warn quit because it was overloaded. The badlands wasn't overloaded, it broke because it wasn't mounted properly, causing it to bream.
I once tried to move a building with my truck using a shoestring, the shoestring broke, must be that the shoestring was junk and not that a virtually immovable object was part of the equation.
After watching channels such as Matt’s Off-road Recovery and Fab Rats plus several more using these winches daily with no problems I don’t believe the winch was the problem.
Cody, engineer here, not related to the winch business though... I'd really love to see a bit more detail about that winch failure. You showed a cracked top and side cover, but those can't be load-bearing; way too flimsy. Which load-bearing part snapped, actually? The fasteners? The frame of the winch? It's still a mystery to me what happened there but as a shot in the dark, I'd guess the whole winch got ripped out of the anchor points and smashed into your bar, shattering the winch's housing. Problem of the winch or the mount? Also, to that plastic cover: Yeah, those fins are a bit strange; probably a way to avoid debris accumulating across the rails. However do note that quite a few plastic materials are flame inhibiting (PVC is a good candidate, fire fighters typically know this and it's noxious properties ;-) ). Try to light it _outdoors_ and see if it catches or self-extinguishes...
I’d like to see details on how the winch was mounted to the truck along with other failure mode details. Also, I’d like to see a Warn winch pull that same stump.
I fallow Matt's of road recovery and Fab rats on RU-vid and they both use these badland winches so I bought one have put it through hell and they hold up just fine.
Just mounted one of these on my truck, exactly because of MORR, Fab Rats, and Casey Ladelle. If one of these winches lasts a year with those guys, it'll last me the rest of my life.
I always thought that a winch was a recovery tool to get your vehicle or another vehicle unstuck from mud and such or to maybe move an “unanchored”object closer to your vehicle. To expect any winch to pull an unprepared stump is ludicrous. I think most thinking people would take one of those expensive tractors and at least dig around the stump to break up the root system a little. To blame a piece of equipment for failing to do something that it wasn’t designed for makes no sense. Testing a Warne winch against a Harbor Frieght winch is pointless. This is the same as people using a long cheater bar (pipe) on a wrench and then wondering why the wrench broke and then top it offf by blaming the wrench for breaking. Just like a lot of things now days, people don’t want to own up to their mistakes. Just blame someone or something else for the problem.
I don't think pulling a tree stump that size with any kind of winch could work either way.. the roots of a tree are as big as the crown, and the stump itself was thick too
I think it was put under much more pressure than it should have been. The truck and tractor on one end and the stump not even partially dug out on the other and who knows how many roots there were. I don't know if this is quite a fair test. If you put it under more load than it advertises what exactly do you expect?
That was a pretty good sized stump and he did have the tractor on site . With the equipment on hand , I would have dug it up some at least . It would be interesting to know just how much pressure was put on that wench .
When you did the zoom in at 0:40 there is clearly movement withing the bumper itself as the winch popped and the bumper snapped back into place. I'd say that your aluminum mounting plate, or bumper as a whole, flexed a little too much. Can't really blame the winch for that one.
well it had pressure on it so it was flexing the frame of the truck. shouldn't have made a difference with the winch because the bumper itself wasn't flexing so the mounting hardware wasn't flexing either. for high strength applications, like a 12,000lbs winch, you should use steel and not aluminum. a winch made out of aluminum just seems like a bad idea.
@@jaytrock3217 THIS Jay exactly and that did not sound Like plastic snapping nor did it sound like the small bolt snapping that holds that cover ON. I think the mount failed wether it was the truck or base of the winch. BUT YOUR correct without a doubt he needs to show the truck side and its interesting he didnt show the underside of the winch itself...
I think he is holding back something my self, and if he really wanted that winch to tug on that stump, he should have given the winch a little help, along with using a block and tackle, not a car tire and a chain!
I fully believe this winch held up its end of the bargain. I love that you tested it beyond its limits! The fact that it literally self destructed before it quit is impressive. Your videos on this tool have convinced me to get one. Thanks for all you do. I realize this is 2 years after you posted this content, but it's still worth the comment.
We used to pull a lot of stumps on the farm. We never risked pulling a stump straight out of the ground because of the danger involved. We would dig around that stump, chop all the roots we possibly could, save the tap root, and then we'd use a large tractor with a chain, and no jerking, and it would usually come. I'm not being disrespectful, but this setup for pulling your stump with the winch, looks like a good opportunity for some hardware through the windshield.
Another RU-vidr had a similar failure. Their conclusion was that the mount was not sufficiently rigid. This design does require a rigid base to keep from twisting. I would check the mount on the truck, for evidence of deflection.
I generally like your videos but I watched the video of you pulling the stump and you did start out with a Warn Winch and it failed before you brought out the bigger truck and this Badland winch. You even said that the wheel you used as a fulcrum was likely to crack and fail because of the pressure and did it anyway. You staked down your tractor, chained behind your 9klb Ford and then blame the winch for pulling past it's max capacity on a stump that was clearly rooted. This isn't a winch failure, this is a process failure because you should have used that backhoe first to dig out around that stump. This is pretty disingenuous since you didn't mention about the Warn failing first.
I'm an engineer. I am not seeing where the critical failure occurred. A broken piece of a housing is not a critical failure. Does it still work? Can we see how it was mounted? Maybe that was contributed to the housing crack. Also, did you exceed the maximum load? All important questions. The plastic piece that was covering the copper should be made of a non-combustible flexible material. Which is an oversight on the part of the Badland Apex engineering team.
I hate this winch because it broke when I tried to pull the continents of Africa and South America back together, the way that they were hundreds of millions of years ago.
I love your content and reviews on tools Cody, but I thought this one was quite harsh on harbor freight. If I’m honest with you I don’t think a warn winch would be able to pull out that aspen stump either. After working for a tree surgeon I know that the root bowl is just as big as the crown of the tree so I think it was unfair to expect a winch to pull out a stump of that size especially without any work on the ground to free things up a bit. Besides, you highlighted the point that winches are for towing things or pulling yourself out of a sticky situation, so they were clearly designed to use the tree as an anchor instead of pulling it out! But if you are so confident in warn winches then it’s only fair that you put one up to the same test without any mercy. Love your vids and keep up the good content!
I think there is a huge difference in the amount of force needed to pull a car out of the ditch then it would be to pull a green stump with a root system the size of a small car.
But still i believe that having it on a car on fresh grass HUGELY lowers the friction which means i dont believe it even got to its limit force. You simply cant have a winch fail while towing something from a car on a grass field before even the car starts sliding. This means it cant even tow that car on THAT field. Like come on!
Well accentually he was pulling a truck attached to a tree, so it should have just dragged the truck. I think it was more of a mounting issue that allowed it to twist.
You tried to pull the stump with a 10000 lbs winch that was trippled and it didn‘t work. Then you used the harbor freight 12000lbs winch and doubled it. How should this have worked?
Hmmm this may not be the whole story. Cody could you spend some time looking at the new bumper and show us the current condition of the mounting location of the winch showing if the plate is still flat/true. It looks like the winch is critically dependent on the durability of the mounting plate and if that mounting plate twists then the winch will twist and break like we see here. Seems like the only way for a winch manufacturer to not be dependent on the mounting plate is to incorporate one in the design, meaning that the open area under that spool would be one solid piece and the winch design is clearly three pieces as you have shown. Not an expert here and I can only see what you have shown us in the footage.
For warn to be this "gold standard" and I would generally agree, after all these years why haven't they been able to improve the IPx rating without compromising thermal venting? Accepting a "common failure" is the same across the board no matter if it's a twist in the case, or a solenoid failure from corrosion. Just because one guy can overcome a solenoid failure in the field doesn't mean every guy can. It's no less of a problem than as described in this video. You need to set your feelings aside when trying to make an "honest" video about a products weak points, and don't put another product on a pedestal as the "gold standard" that has weak points of its own. You should've left out the "I'll stick with warn" and just given an honest autopsy of the winch. This turned into nothing more than a warn advertisement.
I think your professional home owner status came into play on this one. There was no way that stump was coming out without digging At the root base to release some of the hold Any winch used in the way you were mis using it would have broke
On top of all the honest comments.... Winches are designed for rolling, or floating loads. Not static, stumps buried in the ground 3 ft. Appears to be a setup video shoot, to dishonor HF..
Hopefully you have a 12k Warn on order and will be attempting to pull the stump with it to. I know the other Warn was a 10k but will a 12k really make a difference?
Ive personally. Seen a cat on tracks pick its front end up off the ground trying to pull stumps using a 2-1/4" cable when my dad was a logger... They ended up using the excavator to rip them out of the ground and even that took some doing this was a full time logging outfit not just some landscaper that excavator was in excess of 50 tons and was still being lifted before the stumps let loose
Every guy I’ve talked to on the trails swear by their Badland winches. They use and abuse them with no issues. Seems more like a misuse or a fluke in this one. It’d be interesting to test a new one on a Dynamometer and test it against a Warn.
"Let's pull it apart and see what happened" But you didn't do that. I still don't know how it failed. The housing means next to nothing. Did the actual motor fry? Does it still work? I mean the housing broke and pushed the plastic part into contact with the power which made it melt but that isn't the failure either. I'm really curious if that winch still works?
I'm going to go out on a limb a bit here and call this a WINCH BUMPER FAILURE. Winches of this design REGARDLESS of manufacture TOTALLY rely on the bumper to stop the two ends from counter-rotating... which I'm nearly 100% certain was the cause of this failure. I'd wager this is a case of the winch being too powerful for the bumper.
I don't understand how the main body of the winch twisted if the mounting plate in the bumper didn't twist. I'd like to see that bumper to prove that it wasn't the culprit. If the mounting points on the winch didn't break, how was the rest of it able to twist? Science
If I recall correctly the bumper is aluminum not steel a 12k winch should be mounted to a 1/4in steel plate you would need a much thicker aluminum plate to achieve the same resistance to deflection
That has to be over 60 thousand pounds of resistance being pulled when the tree stump is that size. That winch is only rated to drag 12 thousand pounds of resistance. Remember, it is not the weight of an item; it's the amount of resistance measured in pounds that matters.
I herd what you said. I just saw it not doing what you said. No stuck trucks. No people stuck on cliffs. For a second, I thought you would use a tractor to get that trunk out. I know I would.. I have done it too... I just saw it in action by a group of people that tow for a living. Thanks Matt's Offroad Recovery. They are the best. Equipment being used correctly. Pushing it to the limit. I'm off to get that very same one.
I’m a minute into this little video and i can tell you what happened, a guy that should know a lot about trees didn’t know what he was doing trying to uproot an aspen stump and tore up a winch he got for free and is now making a video bashing said winch when it was really user error.
I am very impressed with the winch, more so now. It would recover a Super Duty and a large tractor at the same time if the front bucket had not been down to provide more anchor. At one point it was recovering both. Impressive winch to me.
Agree. Pulling out a truck and tractor at the same time BEFORE it fails is highly impressive. I will be buying this winch to use for its INTENDED purpose!
The mounting plate is vital to the torsion resistance of most winches. I would guess that it was sufficiently stout, but it could be suspect in this particular failure, maybe?
My interpretation is that as force is applied to the winch, the fasteners in the direction of force are not under much tension. But the fasteners toward the cab side are under lots of tension, which probably pulls on 1/4 to 3/8'' steel plate that the bumper is made out of. Granted, theoretically the shear stress is the same between all bolts, but the tension is different. In this case, we can see in the slow motion video that when the cable force is released, the winch frame rebounds toward the cab. This is because the bolts in tension put a lot of stress concentrated at a handful of attach points on the bumper, causing the steel to deform. The magnitude of deformation is dependent on material selection, placement, thickness, etc. The problem with allowing deformation in the mount is that the winch chassis is not designed to resist torsion (twisting force). So what I'm trying to say is that the bolts weren't necessarily loose, but elastic deformation occurred without permanently damaging the mount (there would be no winch rebound if permanent deformation had occurred). This whole response should be taken with a grain of salt because I can only say what I see, and explain what others are thinking was the problem.
I agree the mount was not strong enough and led to the breakage. The other issue is - would the plastic have caught fire? I work for a company that builds AC powered devices. When we injection mold wire enclosure boxes, we have to use an FR (fire rated), self extinguishing plastic to meet the UL standard. He is jumping to conclusions unless he has investigated it beyond what he is saying in the video.
He also kept using it after it broke and I was still working. He was way past its weight limits and way past its duty cycle and when it broke, the motor side moved upward and the other side stays stationary. The mounting plate bent. If anything this is a testament for me to buy this winch
Curious if the winch was being used within manufacturers specifications. While I believe that any quality tool should be able to exceed it, once you are outside of the envelope, who’s fault is it for failure? Manufacturer or operator?
@@Rainaman- with synthetic line you want less layers on the drum them steel. It is very slippery against it's self, which is why the start of the line on the drum has the nylon sleeve. The more line you have out, the less the line pulls into itself and pushes out on the winch body. Also for something like this you should always use a snatch block.
In this case it would be manufacturer. From an engineering standpoint you can't assume people are going to know exactly or even close to what 12,000lbs of force is when they are using it. They should have failsafes built in, such as current control or limiters to monitor approximately the rated force. This is 2021. We have the technology readily available and it's better from a companies standpoint to have their equipment protect itself when going over capacity then tear itself apart and then have to replace the units. It was an engineering fail.
I believe you've asked way more of that winch than what it was designed to do. I'll bet if you pulled the same stunt with a Warn you would have had similar results. What you did there is the same as using a 3/8 drive ratchet to break loose a rusted 5/8 bolt and then blame the ratchet when it fails.
I have worked off road for over 40 years. I have never ever performed a dead pull on a stump to break some thing like you did. Warn is over priced and have owned many on my company trucks, They have broken mainly through abuse just like your video. I switched company trucks over to Mile Marker hydraulic winches for the big ones years ago that work off of the power steering or power take off. To start with your housing mounting must have been weak for the unit to twist. My company has several Harbor Freight winches and they have worked great for the intended job scope placed on them. Please when you do something like this look at the whole picture. I have respected your you tube programs and have enjoyed them. When you make comparisons please do an honest comparison.
I think you needed to address how the winch managed to twist. If all four feet were bolted down solid, and those feet didn’t break off, then the winch could not twist. Were the bolts (that hold the winch down) stretched or stripped when you went to remove the winch?
The apex winch is still a tried and true winch. It broke under misuse and poor mounting. That big fancy bumper was the failure point. That plastic cover over the power leads is there for a reason. If you put metal there and then did what you did then you would have a bit bigger of an issue on your hands. Good on HF for making it right, but I don't think it was a failure on there part. This was user error. If you want to prove all of us wrong. Have a same spec warn try. I bet it will fail. Or rip your bumper the rest of the way off.
I try to leave my stumps long at first to see if the leverage helps remove them. I will hook them up as high as I can. It is amazing what you can pull out when you do this. For bigger trees, I will sometimes dig around the trunk and use my Sawzall with a pruning blade and cut through many of the larger roots. Using this method I have removed many stumps with a come-along and leverage.
Look up a picture of how aspen roots grow and you'll see why the expectation of using that winch to pull that stump out of the ground was ambitious from the start. I get what you're saying about a machine self destructing, but I think this effort was pretty far out of scope.
Is there a chance that the mounting plate it was attached to wasn't strong enough to hold the twisting force and it flexed the frame of the winch adding to the failure . Just a thought. Interesting video
Uh No, it's a Super Duty which means it's 100% perfect and can't have anything wrong with it ever. Ford has never, ever underdesigned their products. [/sarcasm]
Tell Harbor Freight you want a new one to go head to head with warn. Or even better, ask HF for two. One for the head-to-head with warn and another to pull an Aspen trunk. For a second Aspen trunk test, weld a big steel cross member on the bucket of a front loader and mount the Badlands to it and see if it self destructs.
There are a few other reviews on these winches out there. Usually the winch is strong enough that they bend the mounting plates and flex under heavy load causing the pot metal covers to crack. I’m betting the mounting plate on the truck was the failure point. Hopefully Cody shows that plate in a future video. I’m quite curious about it.
@@MakerNoKY Facts the problem was the mounting also keep this in mind he also fried a warn in the same video. I stopped watching till I seen this video about him pulling a stump with a winch and honestly I feel he is leaving out some very important key details just to bash a cheaper alternative to more expensive winches. His ego has grown to ridiculous levels and that lead to me not watching his channel anymore long until like I said that previous video showed up randomly in my feed. He will never admit user error period 🤷 💯
These winch videos are the only videos I have ever watched of his and will be the only videos I ever watch of his. The winch was not at fault here by ANY MEANS period. I will be buying this winch.
Bucks too bumpers are 1/4 steel. You mentioned in your previous video you had the aluminum one… Could perhaps the bumper twister which led to failure of the winch.
so without the mounting bolt holes being broken im curious to see what allowed one side of it to spin? did the mounting bolts shear? were they tight? was the bumper so soft it bent allowing the mounting bolts to move?
Wow you can see the twist in the front of the trucks mounting plate I would look in to that before the winch. People blame cars and trucks all the time for sliding off the road when actually it’s the tires. I say bolt on a warn and do the exact same thing see what happens.
Whole lot more to this story! There are some exceptionally smart people in your comments Cody. Until you show the mount that failed (it was not the winch that failed) this video is worthless. If the threads in the main plates of the winch body (for the mounting bolts) did not strip, and the bolts did not break (which you failed to show) the only possible explanation for this was mount failure. If the threads did fail? Then yes, it was a failure of the winch. If the bolts broke (and you used the supplied hardware) again, put the blame on the winch. Otherwise? It was the mount. If you know so much about winches you should know that the mount is what stops the winch from twisting itself apart.
I previously commented about the positives and negatives of this review… seems to be the consensus that it was at least more operator error than bad equipment. Does this make Cody an East Coast Guy? 😆
Propulsion Engineer here: There appears to be significant flex in the mounting plate. Whether that lead to the failure is unknown. Echoing the statements of many before me, the Apex winch was exposed to loads well beyond its capacity. Stating many times over that you do not have experience with Aspens, some prep work and research would have better aided you in its removal. What I do agree with is the overall build quality of the winch should reviewed. Places where thermal energy and Joule heating are present should have preventative measures in place to prevent ignition or thermal overload. The components around any electrical connection under load should exceed the NFPA for plastics and be self extinguishing, or simply be made of non-carbon material. I would to have loved to have seen this load with a tension gauge. I willing wager you doubled its capacity. Love to see a Warn / Apex face off.
@@huethehand1 thank you for the response. My assessment of double was based on the shear pressure from the bucket AFTER digging it out. Also, the fact that it was pulling two vehicles towards the stump with brakes engaged. That said your assessment could very well be true as well.
@@slingflur He was also using a snatch block if you look closely near the stump. Basically a pulley that goes back to the truck. So yes, he effectively was doubling the pulling force.
Gotta say I typically don’t disagree but I do on this one. Those Badland winches are decent reliable tools and this one was pushed well outside its range, you knew that. However, we are looking forward to the next stump pulling vidja. Sponsored by WARN 😀
I've seen the exact same failure happen before. You know what? It was because the mount flexed. All winches of that style are open at the bottom with the intent of using the support of a good plate that doesn't flex too much. As another poster mentioned, it appears that the bumper was flexing, which ultimately cracked the case because it was being loaded in a way it was not intended to be loaded. Btw, the last guy the broke one posted a video of the "rebuild" and it was nothing but loosening things up, rotating the ends, and tightening everything back down. As far as the failure mode of it "starting the truck on fire", did it? No. Would it absolutely be user error to keep pushing the winch after knowing that something was wrong? Absolutely.