Jeep_Dawg08

[QUOTE=Jeep_Dawg08;82708]Was out checking out the local Harbor Frieght this afternoon and as winches go, all they had was 'Badlands Winch'...
Has anyone heard of them and is it worth the $399 for a 12,000 pounder??
I'm on tight funds right now and plan on using inverted with my stock bumper.
Please any thoughts and advice is wanted.....

Rednroll

[QUOTE=Jeep_Dawg08;3494681]Dude!!! You just missed the sale!!! $299!!!

See Here:
https://www.jk-forum.com/forums/jk-t...%24299-235375/


However, do some googling, they often have coupons for $50 off at HF and such.

I bought one during that sale, I'm still planing out how I'm going to mount it since I'm looking for a removable solution. Waiting until it's a little warmer. For an additional $50 HF offers a 2 year no questions asked exchange policy. I got that, since I wasn't sure like you.

However, seeing it in action I was pretty impressed.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLna9SUGwyg Ya see, it survived the dumb redneck test with flying colors!!!

Gman*2007

[QUOTE=Jeep_Dawg08;3494681]It's a good affordable winch for general duty. Welcome to the forum.

GoinCamando

A little late but this exact model is on sale again. $299 at Harbor Freight.
I used to have a Ramsey 12000 winch. It has the exact same motor and gear design. It worked great every time. Until one year it was frozen solid. I drove thru so much water over its 5yr lifespan that the motor armature rusted solid. I rarely used it. Only cost $50 ordered online to replace the motor. Everything else worked just fine. Heaviest thing I pulled was 6500+ lbs. 96 suburban, 6" lift with mud terrain 35's. The line was pulled literally out to the max 100' and the closest tree was at 90 degrees of me. So, it pulled me sideways up a slight hill for a good 50ft before I had traction to roll on my own. And that 50ft half was sideways. It wouldn't straighten out!!

Anyway....I'M BUYING ANOTHER ONE!

General duty? Half duty? (Honestly)Who uses a winch for so long it over heats anyways...unless ur climbing wet mountains or exceeding recommended weight without a block/pulley! So it's a great buy for quite a few of us.
I know there will be a lot of comments on that part. LoL

firefighter53111

Where'd you see it for 299? I see it for 399

GoinCamando

Harbor Freight.

I get the email coupon mailer.
See if this works:

http://widgets.harborfreight.com/wsw...tm_source=1010

Rebelyell22

My cousin has one on his ZR2. I was stuck in a mud hole up to my door sills and it pulled me out

goaterguy

Check this thread:

https://www.jk-forum.com/forums/modi...-winch-278523/

I wrote:

Think about this, Chris at Jeepaddons charges $349 for the 12K Engo winches with Premium Finish. Lifetime Warranty on the mechanical one year on the electrical (just like Warn) delivered to your house and proven great customer service.

Now, the Harbor Freight cost $299.99 but you have to add taxes (average US sales tax for 2012 was 9.6%) about $30 and maybe $10 in gas to go to the store and get it. And you get 90 days warranty or you can pay extra for the two year one.

And if you are like me, you will never leave HF without buying more than what you came to get!

I love HF but economically it doesn't make sense to buy the HF winch.

951JEEP

$349?? Is that a forum deal? Its much more on their website

Rednroll

When I was in the market to buy my winch, Engo was on the top of my list. However, I decided to purchase the HF winch based off of two deciding factors. "Convenience" and "less pricing confusion". There's a HF less than 2 miles from my house, where I could go look at the thing, pick it up and carry it out the door and do the exact same thing if I needed to return it. I see you forgot to mention shipping costs when you mention the Engo winch, why is that? Is there a local retail store that carries them? How much does it cost me to ship it back to use that Warranty if needed and how long will it take for them to do their warranty analysis before I get something in return? I know when I purchased the extended warranty for the HF, it comes with a no questions asked return policy. I bring it back, and walk out the door on the same visit with a replacement. I've been sold the "Lifetime warranty" run around before. It sounds great on paper, then when you go to use it, you learn all the hassles, unexpected costs and inconveniences you end up going through.

So, the other thing I didn't like about the Engo winch was their pricing. You go to their website you find it for $449. You dig around in threads on this forum and pretty much every other Jeep forum on the web and you find JeepAddOns-Chris running some special forum price for $369. Now, I read your post and you say it's $349. Will the real Engo winch price please stand up?

I go to the HF website, and its the same price listed on their website as you find it in their stores. No confusion there.

Overall, I feel the Engo winch and the Badlands/HF winch are the EXACT same winch with different branding stickers put on them. If someone can prove to me otherwise, then I'm all ears. Every aspect of these winches are the same. Specs, mechanical layout design, connectors, control box, gearbox, frame, fairlead, and even the remote is the EXACT same controller and the "Premium Finish". I have even read that they're made in the exact same manufacturing facility.

So I won't say one is better than the other, because I strongly feel they're the same budget winch sold through different distributors with different stickers slapped on the outside of them.

Which leads me to that Four Wheeler magazine shootout review. How "convenient" that the HF Badlands winch didn't work out of the box to be able to actually bench mark it against the other winches huh? What? They couldn't get another one with the 90 day no questions asked return policy? I'm pretty certain the majority of us who have actually purchased one of these winches hasn't run into the same problem, or we would be reading about it on these forums quite often. Four Wheeler Magazine must have been just that lucky then huh? And they were in such a bind that they couldn't have possibly gotten a replacement. All of that seems pretty fishy to me. You know what that is right? That's "advertising" dollars at work. Even the results of the review have the stink of advertising dollars written all over it. Yep, Four Wheeler magazine is just like EVERY other magazine publication on the market. They're funded by their advertising sponsors. You know, the ones where you're flipping through the pages and you see "Warn" in big bright letters? It doesn't seem fishy to anyone that the Warn winch ranked highest overall, yet the Engo winch beat the Warn out in the majority of performance categories, but the Warn was highly ranked in the "perceptual" rankings categories like "Power wire quality", "Remote Control function", "Exterior labeling" and "Instruction manual". It doesn't seem fishy to anyone that the Warn winch kicked every other winch's butt in those categories which boosted it to the top of the overall ranking score? Hey, get a Warn winch, it has a great Instruction manual, pretty stickers and its remote goes beep..beep, instead of click...click when you press the buttons.

If Four Wheeler Magazine went that far to put that much of an emphasis on things like "Exterior labeling" and "Instruction manual", then why would I trust them that the Badlands winch didn't work out of the box, other than to hide the fact that it's most likely the EXACT same winch as the Engo winch?