TESTED: Superwinch Winch2Go Portable Winch
by Erik Jacobs
To a certain degree, when you are a one-person race team, it means you have to do everything yourself. Pack the vehicles. Prep the vehicles. Transport the vehicles. Drive the vehicles. It’s a grind. The days when it was just driving the car to the track to drive the car at the track are long gone. So, with greater responsibility comes greater challenges.
One of those challenges? Getting the stupid car onto the trailer. Steel trailers are relatively inexpensive, but they tend to be high off the ground. The ramps aren’t that long. When I sit in the SC300 to drive it onto the trailer, even with ramp extenders, as soon as the car’s front wheels are on the ramps, I can’t see the trailer anymore. This makes it very hard to self-load. We all probably know someone that has dropped a car off a trailer in some horrible way, and I didn’t want to be that guy.
It was time for a winch.
Notice that I didn’t say “my trailer.” That’s because it’s not mine. My friend Christian, who you’ve seen a few pictures of before (and you’ll see again in this article), happens to own this trailer. But he doesn’t have much space to keep it anymore. I have room at my house, so the trailer is on a kind of permanent loan to me, and Christian doesn’t have to pay for storage. It’s a win-win!
Anyway!
This toolbox is pretty large, so it should easily be able to accommodate a winch. But I didn’t want to do some crazy fabrication project, and I didn’t want to buy some super expensive winch. Christian happened to have a portable winch that he kept in his truck, and I decided that would be a good option.
This is a pretty cool kit. It is a toolbox with a winch inside, and it’s totally portable. It comes with many accessories designed to help you be able to use the winch in various situations. It’s quite complete.
You simply attach the winch to something, hook the cables to the winch box, and then attach the power cables to a battery. Seems easy enough!
The trailer needs to be hooked up to the E350 van that I tow with. That makes the trailer pretty far away from the battery, and the power cord is not going to reach the battery. What if I put a battery inside the trailer toolbox?
Brilliant.
Maybe.
5 comments
Nice, I just installed a Warn VR8000 on my trailer that i got on Facebook marketplace for $500 CAD. I used a hitch reciever off a parts truck I had, and a $79 Amazon portable winch plate that xomes with a locking hitch pin for a bit of security. Bit of cutting, welding, and paint and it is the best trailer mod yet for loading the non running junk I like.
Now that I have a winch, I will never want to have a trailer without one. I want to figure out a way to use a snatch block to allow for more convenient winching of vehicles that have tow points in different spots. Your setup sounds nice!
Thought this was the primary purpose of Harbor Freight’s winches. A 5k is like $200 bucks.
Though the “winch in a box” would be a great option for someone with like, a Subaru Outback who goes to the snow a lot. You could throw it in when necessary, but don’t have to get all Battlewagon-y just to have an option if someone’s stuck.
A winch that’s critical for getting the race car on the trailer is not something where I want to tempt fate with Harbor Freight “disposable tools.” If this was a non-critical application, it probably would be a totally viable option. There are a lot of tools I would and have bought from Harbor Freight. I don’t think a winch is going on that list 😃
Your snowy Subaru idea is on point, though.
Funny enough, I have a 1995 Outback with 350,000 miles on it!