To clarify a couple of reasons for my choice.
- 90% of the time I will be driving to work, shops, restaurants, family homes on tar roads so winch will be at home, in the shed, wrapped in plastic.
- Anytime I know I might be going off-road I will take it with me.
- It will be inside the back of the vehicle and only taken out when required, or when the terrain gets to the point that it is likely to be required. No point trying to install it when the socket and hitch are under water/mud.
- As others have pointed out the winches are rarely/not usually in a straight line, but they are also not always in front of the vehicle.
- Often it is better to recover a vehicle back the way it came, as you know what is there, and the obstacle is in front of the vehicle.
- Typically a winch can be used to assist the vehicle to drive out by itself, not take the whole load.
- A winch is only one component of a recovery kit
- Often the vehicle with the winch is pulling out another vehicle. Often they need to turn around on the track as the vehicle was behind them. This is not always possible.
- The ability to mount the winch on the front or the rear makes it more versatile to me, but I could be wrong.
- 4WD's look more manly with a winch permanently mounted to the front so I will miss out on that part.
- Often the time comes to use the winch only to find it doesn't work as it hasn't been maintained and it is sitting on the front of the vehicle getting hammered by rain, hail snow, mud, dust and 40 Million bugs. Plus the odd kangaroo.
- I wonder if you could make up an extension for the cable enabling it to be temporarily mounted on the tow hitch of a nearby vehicle 5 or 10 metres away???
That makes perfect sense to me Dave. If I had the same use case as you have, I would go with a portable also. The biggest difference for me is on point 5 - anytime I've needed to winch, it's been either on a return trip (i.e. I have been in the bush and am on my way home, and don't want to turn around in that case and go further into the bush) or on a through trip (where I would not have the time or fuel to turn around) so for me, going through was the best option and often is. That's not true for everyone though.
#3 is an excellent point, but reminds me of another "pro" with a permanently mounted wich, and that is it's not always safe/easy to lug around 50kgs or more of winch, trying to line up the reciever, etc. This is exacerbated by bad weather, fatigue, and many other factors. But, you are already spot on with the approach to controlling that - do it before you need to, which is sound advice.
As for 10, perhaps if you grow a beard or get some aggressive tattoos you can compensate? Or maybe a set of "Truck Nuts" for your Grenadier? (In case it's not clear, I am kidding -- I chuckled at your comments of missing out on that part
)
For number 11, I consider winch maintenance part of routine care and feeding. Every oil change at least - that's 5k kms for me - I spool out the winch and clean it up. It still looks pretty rough, but mechanically it's immaculate.
As I said I think for the way you describe you using the Grenadier, a receiver mount makes sense. The OP was looking at a bit more flexibility in his use case, so I still think a permanent mount is the way to go for him, but for a lot of grenadier owners, I think there will be a $4k (or whatever) paperweight off the front of their rigs that goes unused for most of their time owning it.
