I want to mount a 12000lb Badlands (HF) winch to a car hauler style trailer. The 12000 capacity is way more than I really need I believe, but the price difference going to the lower power winches was not significant. I initially thought I could mount the winch to the frame using some channel iron, no welding capability at this time, so bolts; and mount the fairlead to the trailer bed or actually the front square bar along the front of the trailer bed, can't remember the correct name - never really knew it. My thinking was to allow the cable to smoothly transition over the trailer body, however it seemed that the fairlead probably needs to be close to the winch to effectively guide the cable onto the spool. The instructions don't have any real details on the fairlead mounting and based on things I have seen it usually seems to be within a few inches of the winch, but I would like to know if that is true or not. I was planning on putting the winch inside a trailer tongue box to keep it out of the weather along with the battery and this would put it at least 18" back from the front of the trailer bed. As a car is winched up and the normal tie down point being on either the left or right side of the vehicle, the cable's angle as it is winched in could become severe, this would especially be the case if the winch was directly on the trailer bed like a tow truck so mounting the winch further forward along with the fairlead seems prudent. Since the fairlead didn't come with much mounting hardware I will need to be creative and the spacing to the winch is still an issue, could I put it in front of the tongue box and about 6-8" in front of the winch and still expect it to wind up correctly?
One other question, the manual says to wind the winch in with at least a 500lb load on it to keep the cable taut. That is quite a load, how do you do this? I don't want to leave the cable spooled out if possible since I won't use it often and it would be in the way if I wanted to put something on the trailer bed while it simply sits around so winding it in without a car, etc. to provide a load is a challenge.
One other question, the manual says to wind the winch in with at least a 500lb load on it to keep the cable taut. That is quite a load, how do you do this? I don't want to leave the cable spooled out if possible since I won't use it often and it would be in the way if I wanted to put something on the trailer bed while it simply sits around so winding it in without a car, etc. to provide a load is a challenge.
