Good progress. You could get one of these and mount that winch on anything with a 2" receiver.
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That's what my HF winch is mounted on actually; I put a receiver on the front of the truck - initially to provide a front tow-point since these trucks didn't come with recovery hooks and the frame ends where the bumper mounts aren't appropriate on their own - the frame rails aren't connected together until a few feet back so you could tweak the rails if you pull to the side on one. The receiver hitch spans between them right at the end providing extra structure... and obviously enables a removable winch, which I also wired to the back of the truck.
I've been thinking through my options for removing some tree trunks that I've already cut.
Reading the arborist forums, some of those guys distrust using any truck or tractor as an anchor point for tree work, one issue being that tires only have so much ground contact.
While 3pt forestry winches incorporate blades to resist the forces of winching an already downed log, I don't recall seeing any examples of someone using one to winch out a stump.
Right now, I am wondering how effective it would be to toss some of HF's moving blankets over the lines/straps used to pull if they were to break? The moving blankets are pretty cheap to buy.
Not only do the tires have relatively low traction, but a lot of arborist winch work has the line going up into a tree, so it's lifting the truck off of the contact - reducing the traction. Pulling on the A-frame that I have, on flat ground, would result in a slight upward pull (the pull point on the A-frame is just under 7' up); in this video I was actually pulling slightly down.
The other problem of course that assuming it's an automatic transmission with the parking break engaged, you can only count on traction from both rear wheels (from the parking brake assuming it's well adjusted) and partial from the front unless you have a locking front differential, unless someone's in the truck with the brakes engaged, and then they're vulnerable to a broken line coming back.
Biggest concern I'd have with the forestry winch vs stump is that there could be higher forces and forestry winches are usually set up with a steel cable, which has a tendency to whip if it breaks under tension. The 3ph forestry winch does have a screen in back, but I don't know if it's got sufficient coverage to guard against the whip. You could put a synthetic on the forestry winch, but then you'd have to be more careful with it dragging, which happens when pulling logs... pulling a stump out is a short pull so it's easier to guard a synthetic line for that.
Synthetic lines barely stretch and typically just drop if broken, but adding weights on the line still can be done for insurance.
I anchored the truck from behind with a 30k strap to a solid tree so I wasn't concerned about movement; a previous attempt to use the A-frame just with the tractor pulling had poor results because R4 tires on damp ground kinda suck; best case without an anchor is you're going to mess up the ground at least a bit.
I think the biggest concern with broken lines in vehicle recovery tends to be because people don't slowly add load but instead try to yank. A chain that's placed under tension slowly will just drop if it breaks, but if you start with a loose chain and yank on it really hard and it breaks, much of the chain is already in motion and as such things do it's going to stay in motion until something stops it. Static recovery straps are safer than dynamic, though they're harder to use - the dynamic allow you to get some momentum on the puller and then the dynamic strap stretches and transfers a chunk of that momentum to the stuck vehicle, but then you've got a lot of energy stored in the strap from stretch plus you've literally given it some velocity (toward the pulling vehicle). With a static strap and tension slowly applied, there's very little energy stored from stretch and no appreciable velocity from the pull, so a break anywhere - tow hook, strap, tow shackle or hitch, stuff just drops.
