OK. One (short) day of using the winch. Overall impressions are "great". Reduces my towing capacity, however allows me to gather the wood MUCH faster, for a great gain in time savings.
The bad - It is definitely not "standard" Cat measurements. I had to remove my quick hitch.
- There is a lack of attachment points - meaning I have to load the chokers into the bucket etc. instead of onto the winch. I'll probably rectify this using the guard. I'll also be adding something so the chainsaw can be hung on the winch.
Quality is great, and the manual is quite impressive. PTO supplied is very long (9" longer than I could use, so had to cut it down).
I made the chokers myself, using cheap transport grade 70 chain. I discovered this was much cheaper at an industrial supplier (Greggs Distributing) than at the local discount emporium (Princess Auto). The choker hooks came from Labonville, and were a great price. They were shipped in such a manner that I did NOT have to pay the brown van ripoff brokerage fees (yes, UPS loses American business a LOT of Canadian orders).
I also got to try out my new self releasing snatch block. It worked very well, other than 2 small 1D10T operator errors. Unless I forget, these are easy to avoid (basically the cable slipped out of the pully and kicked the release).
I'll get some more pictures on my next days off of the home made chokers and the self releasing snatch block.
I'll try to get action shots next days off (a week or so).
EDIT - Why do my pictures rotate 90 degrees?
