Winch roller fairlead mount on the cheap

[Grand_Wag_85]

Putting a Harborfreight 12ooo LB winch on my car trailer's winch plate and I need an inexpensive roller fairlead mount to go between the trailer and winch. I see a million things online in the $50 range, need something a little cheaper.

Trailer


BTW HF winch as advertised


Actual

[44bz]

Maybe consider the HF winch mount? http://m.harborfreight.com/universal-ch ... 20provided

It's $50 but they always have 20% off coupons available.


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[BRUTUS]

I would get two pieces of flatbar 3/16 or 1/4" thick, maybe 1" wide, and about 16" long. Drill the foot mount pattern of the winch. Bend the bar in a vice to a 90 deg angle. Mount the winch with the bars pinched by the winch mounts and layout where the fairlead should mount. Drill the fairlead holes and attach.

Don't think it can get any cheaper or simpler than that.

EDIT: crude drawing for clarification

[Grand_Wag_85]

I would get two pieces of flatbar 3/16 or 1/4" thick, maybe 1" wide, and about 16" long. Drill the foot mount pattern of the winch. Bend the bar in a vice to a 90 deg angle. Mount the winch with the bars pinched by the winch mounts and layout where the fairlead should mount. Drill the fairlead holes and attach.

Don't think it can get any cheaper or simpler than that.

I was pondering something like this but I'm new with metal workings so I wasn't sure if it would be safe or not. Gonna go this route.

Thanks!!

[BRUTUS]

It will be safe. The fairlead rarely would impart any load on the mounts because it is mounted to your trailer. Best of luck and post pictures of final product!

[Grand_Wag_85]

It will be safe. The fairlead rarely would impart any load on the mounts because it is mounted to your trailer. Best of luck and post pictures of final product!

Will do man, thanks

[FSJ Guy]

Since it's on a trailer, the fairlead will never see much of a side load. You'll be fine with that setup.

[Stuka]

The flat stock bent like that wont hold up though. The fairlead mount needs to be able to handle whatever force the winch is capable of pulling. As the cable will often be against one of the rollers.

[Cataldo]

I agree with Stuka. For what it is worth my Chick has the harbor freight 12,000 lb winch on the front of her YJ with the HF winch plate. Both are quality pieces, the winch is a great bang for the buck deal. The plate is very nice and has the holes predrilled to mount to the frame on her YJ. haha.

Edit: My father in law has the same winch on his trailer and it has kicked ass for years now.

[BRUTUS]

The flat stock bent like that wont hold up though. The fairlead mount needs to be able to handle whatever force the winch is capable of pulling. As the cable will often be against one of the rollers.

The cable should almost NEVER be up against one of the rollers though.

I completely agree if the winch were mounted to the front of a vehicle. But on a trailer, the top roller should be the only roller that EVER see's any load and ONLY when the vehicle is fully on the trailer and snugged up to the winch.

[Grand_Wag_85]

Ended up getting the harbour freight mount BUT we have a problem. The mount sits too low to use the fairlead so I have to either put a big plate under the mount to get it high enough to use or put washers between remount on the trailer and the HF mount. Would it be safe to use a few washers? Local steel yard wants Atleast $50 to cut me the plate.

[Grand_Wag_85]

Already had Jeeps on the trailer...LOL


Sitting too low in the water to use the fairlead

[BRUTUS]

You could always cut the fairlead mount off and weld a 1.5 or 2" strap of steel between it and the mount base.

You don't have to put a full plate under the winch. Two bars of steel would do fine and they should cost much less than $50.

I would not want to use washers if at all possible. Not that your pulling loads will be that large but the extra leverage of the load on the bolts is just something I would avoid if at all possible because you change the failure mechanism from shear to bending which in turn lowers the failure loads on the bolts themselves. How many washers are we talking about anyways? 1-5 would probably be ok I guess. Any more than that and I would just use bar stock with drilled holes.

The more I think about this post, I would be inclined to just go without the fairlead all together. Since it is on a trailer, you are not going to have any weird side pulls and the bottom roller should NEVER even roll. The top roller is the only one that would ever be used. If it were me, I would just be conscious of where the loading vehicle sits on the trailer that makes the winch line rub on the top winch bar and stop the winch short of that point. At that point the loading vehicle should be on the trailer enough that it could be pushed by hand the rest of the way with little effort. Worst case is that the tow rig could be moved to a position where the loading vehicle had a slight downhill pitch that you could just use gravity to finish loading it.

What tools do you have that you could "fabricate" a solution to this problem? welder? grinder? chopsaw? It seriously would take me $5 and 20 minutes to make the brackets that I described above.

[Grand_Wag_85]

Just mocked it up with washers and had to use 12 and bring it up Atleast an inch.

Gonna get me some flat bar tomorrow and either lift this up or just build that bracket you drew out above. Actually just got home from buying a chop saw and I do have a welder, torches and drill press.

I don't really think the fairlead is necessary but I've got a bad history with winches.

[FSJ Guy]

X2 on the bar flat stock. Stay away from the washers. Flat stock with holes drilled to the correct diameter for your bolts will be perfect.

Run your bars parallel to the direction of travel. This will also be parallel to your winch rope when in use. That will help the bar(s) manage the load, too.

If you mount them the other way, they would have a tendency to "roll over" and that would just be another force that you don't want or need on the bolts.

[BRUTUS]

Just mocked it up with washers and had to use 12 and bring it up Atleast an inch.

Gonna get me some flat bar tomorrow and either lift this up or just build that bracket you drew out above. Actually just got home from buying a chop saw and I do have a welder, torches and drill press.

I don't really think the fairlead is necessary but I've got a bad history with winches.

I totally agree that you should not use the washers.

Additional design feature for the day... if you want to get fancy and overdo these brackets, you can make a small rounded tab with a single hole that will catch the upper rod hardware on the winch and weld it to the upright bracket. This will add a ton of structure and "kill it dead" at the same time. Like this:


Finally, when you make the brackets and "rough assemble" them on your bench, I would drill the lowest holes in the uprights of the brackets so that the fairlead is as low as it will go without allowing the fairlead to go below the bottom of the brackets. I said "holes" above because you may consider while you have them apart adding more holes above these holes to give you options to move the fairlead down the road. I suspect that you will most likely only use the bottom set of holes but you never know.

[Grand_Wag_85]

Thanks for the tips Jason. I'm definitely going that route when I get around to building the GW. Today I just went the quick way just to get this done.

Put my new saw to use and the drill press making the spacers. The local steel shop had a 6.5' drop of 2"X1/4" and it only cost $4!

The saw leaves some to be desired. Seems to melt the metal more than slice thru it, but it is a HF saw and blade...lol







One thing I should have done differently would have been to tack weld the pieces of bar together then tack them to the plate. It was a PITA and a half to get everything lined up. Thankfully I had a second set of hands.

[BRUTUS]

One thing I should have done differently would have been to tack weld the pieces of bar together then tack them to the plate. It was a PITA and a half to get everything lined up. Thankfully I had a second set of hands.

Two suggestions: 1) you could have bolted all the plates together before welding them together or 2) cut the plates first, weld them together and then drill through all the plates at the same time. Hindsight is 20/20.

Looks good thought.

[Grand_Wag_85]

And I broke the winch

[BRUTUS]

I am left to wonder if the Chinese will ever figure out how to manufacture a quality product.