Hydraulic winch build

[PreacherM]

Here's what I've come up with so far. I'm open for input on the design as well as features I should include.

The horizontal slot is where the winch cable will exit. Oval hole is just to be able to see the winch drum. Base plate is 36" wide. Overall height is 29".
I'll be fastening some kind of boxes on top for storing snatch blocks, oil, gas, etc. Probably put a chainsaw holder on too. Will make a couple steel tubes on the tractor side to hold chains.
Also will be fabing an adjustable support leg out of square tubing.
The main plate will be 1/4, with the 3pt brackets, chain hooks, etc 3/8. So far with the winch it should be right about 300lbs.
I will be doing the welding, but plan to have the sheet steel CNC cut.

 

[Gordon Gould]

Nice project. In a lot of ways you are better off building your own. One of the hardest things to do is to find a pto forestry winch that is actually designed to fit on a small tractor. Farmi used to make a 290 for that but no more. If you did find a different motor to speed it up I think 4 or 5 Klbs, or even less, would be plenty for what you are doing and your light tractor.

I know you are not there yet but I would want the drum to free spool to make pulling out cable faster. You can do it with the motor control valve set-up if if the winch itself has no free spool mode.

Keep your reports coming !!

gg

 

[PreacherM]

Nice project. In a lot of ways you are better off building your own. One of the hardest things to do is to find a pto forestry winch that is actually designed to fit on a small tractor. Farmi used to make a 290 for that but no more. If you did find a different motor to speed it up I think 4 or 5 Klbs, or even less, would be plenty for what you are doing and your light tractor.

I know you are not there yet but I would what the drum to free spool to make pulling out cable faster. You can do it with the motor control valve set-up if if the winch itself has no free spool mode.

Keep your reports coming !!

gg

Yeah I should mention that my tractor only weighs about 3000lbs with loader, fluid, etc.

The winch has a freespool mode.

 

[Tinhack]

My old JD 420C was converted to a pipe layer in it's early years. It has two winches. One for the boom and one for the line out. Only the line out winch has free spool. There's a large lever that shifts that in and out. I had the boom almost straight up and down--Just enough to clear the edge of a trailer. The line out would only lift about a 3,000 pound OBI punch press off the deck. That was all it had in it. As a side note, the winches use 3/4" hoses.

I can't find my pictures except this old one from the auction. It shows the free-spool lever sticking up.
Edit: Don't confuse the throttle lever on the dash.

 

[Rustyiron]

I'd suggest a simple mock up enough to actually run the winch under a load enough to drag the tractor.
This could be something as simple as a channel about 30" long with 2 pins for the lower lift arms. You shouldn't really need a top link for this. My thinking is to prove the winch and the tractors ability to run it before you design and build everything around that particular winch. You'll need the hydraulic lines anyway.
You're design looks good but since you don't have to worry about driveshaft (pto) angles, I'd build in a vertical selection of lower pin locations. My observation is that smaller tractors really can't lift a conventional pto winch very high to clear obstacles and keep most of the log out of the dirt.
And for the safety police, careful operation is required the higher you pull from.

 

[2manyrocks]

I've only had an Igland 3501 for a few months so others with more experience will know better than me. What comes to mind as really useful is having storage for the choker chains, chainsaw, log peavey, gas, oil, wedges, chainsaw file, wrench. The 3501 has a couple of pins on the lower blade that can be removed to allow it to pivot if needed for more ground clearance.

The other thing that is super useful is having extra log sliders on the cable. The ability to pull 3 or 4 choker chains is a great time saver because I can pull a bunch of limbs at once to get them out of the way.

If I were going to adapt a hydraulic winch, it would seem simpler to me to start with a used box blade for the base?