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hey guys... I've been looking for a winch for awhile, was really close to buying one a couple times but deals fell through or the auction bid went higher than I thought it was worth. Anyway I've pretty much decided on harbor freight badland brand winches, they have a 2,000 and a 2,500lb winch, they both come with 50' of 5/32" cable, but the 2500 comes with a wireless remote. I can get either for 50+tax.

The only difference between the two that I can tell is the 2500 lb winch has a "dynamic" brake, and the 2,000lb winch uses an "automatic load holding brake."

Does anybody know the difference between the types of brakes? I've been googling and searching this site but I can't quite figure it out. From what I gather the dynamic brake is an electric brake, auto brake is mechanical in the gears locking up.

Bottom line is I don't know what the real world implications are. I don't want to drop a $1500 engine on the ground because a brake failed, or let off the winch expecting it to drop maybe 1/4" for a brake to catch and it falls 2".

I plan to mount this on my engine swapped and lifted Festiva. I already made a 1off (maybe 3 off? Haha it's my own and it works.) brush gaurd and I'm in the process of making a jig that will stick out in front of the car so I will be able to pull up to a junk yard car or maybe a small truck and pull engines and transmissions...or make an engine swap in my driveway easier, the cherry picker is tricky on the slight incline. I don't intend to use it for much more than lifting 500lbs, the engines I play with don't weigh a dime over 250 and the trannies are less than 60.

murf

I do believe the dynamic brake will let loose over the rating (same one I have on my ATV, pull too hard and it'll let out slowly).

The load holding brake actually locks the winch.

Both have drawbacks. The first will let cable out when over it's weight rating, and the brake could snap a cable if it's locked and way too much weight is applied.

PARIAH

I'd be afraid to lift anything of value with a $50 winch. Get the one with the remote and be sure to test it before lifting something valuable.

BTW... I'd love to see photos of your Festiva.

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Thanks for the replies! I'll definitely be testing this out before anything serious is lifted. I've got a 130horse DOHC 1.8 fully rebuilt and a transmission I installed an aftermarket LSD in together worth about 4 grand that I don't want to drop lol.. I'll be putting it in a Festiva this comming year.

This is my Festiva, I got about $1,000 in this car haha.. Absolutely love it!

The rear has been lifted another 2.5" since this pic, the front has about 4" of lift. I beefed up the spring rates to 175 front and 150 rear up from 110/90 stock. It does really well on the road, but my next performance based build I want to try 150/135 with a coil over setup, lowered with 195/45/14 Toyo t1r proxes. The engine is a 1.6L from a 89 Mercury Tracer, but I used second generation (93 Mazda 323) electronics. It's around an extra 30 HP, took 3 days to bolt it in, one day was nothing but cleaning lol..

175/50/13's on 13x7 wheels.

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This is with no engine, the engine weight only dropped it about an inch or so in the front. Rear has come up and I don't have any current pics.. My car usually looks like I just took it mud running because of the wheels and no fender flares, yet. I'll probably try to find some big tires before next summer.

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You would be amazed at the difference this ~80/90 hp engine makes over the stock 60 horse 1.3L. This car was for fun, it's a work horse, takes me to work and back every day, still gets 40 miles to a gallon, and it can hang with cars that cost 20-30x what I have in it. It's my 5th so far

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I got the 2,000lb auto load holding winch, thanks for the feedback guys! I got it mounted yesterday with a piece of 3/16" steel.

Alright this is what I have in mind for the Festiva, I figure I'll run it by you guys to see what you think.. I have some 185/70/13 tires that are way big on the front right now. I should be getting them swapped out for a good winter tire soon. Next summer I'm gonna check into some 4 wheeler 12x24x10.50's, if I can find them in the DOT approved variety.

I have a stockpile of old axles, I want to use two for a strut tower brace that folds out in a triangle shape, one from each strut tower, then axles going down into a cup I will weld on the mounting plate for my winch, to support the weight. Also to keep the plate from just bending down off the car I'll weld up a bracket and bolt a trailer jack to it, something like this..http://m.harborfreight.com/1000-lb-s...ack-41005.html

I'll probably fab up a head piece with a piece of thick walled 3" steel pipe sticking out so all I have to do is pull the strut tower bars out and drop a couple pins in to secure it.

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Really bad sketch I just installed a photo editor on my phone to give you a better idea, I also want to have a hole cut to mount a ball in case I want to nose into a trailer to pull something heavy up on it...I already have something heavy in mind lol..

I will be tying the brush gaurd into it and adding more cross sections when I figure out how I want to do it to make it look a little better. I just need something to keep engines or whatever from bouncing off my headlights if things get rough.

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Oh, I have a ford Aspire too, I'm sure you guys don't care lol, but I really like my little cars. Everybody I know talks about them but I do more with my little cars than they do with their stuff. So say what you want but I get stuff done, and get better MPG's doing it too! (32-45) I would have used the Festiva for this but I had it up on jack stands mounting the winch and swapping steering racks and LCA's this weekend. Both cars have class III receivers mounted to the bumpers and bumpers reinforced to the unibody. Basically the car will get ripped in half or the suspension tweaked before I lose a load... Which is the way I want it, I would rather screw up a $500 car and start all over than get someone hurt. I don't plan on hauling more weight than this load haha, it was actually over my guess by 160lbs! But the trusty 3 speed auto pulled and stopped it without breaking a sweat(except for that one hillmountain.) 860lbs isn't bad at all IMO.