Ok, so I am going to be buying a winch. I know I want to go hydraulic, still deciding on brands.

My question is if this is an ok way to get your hydraulic pressure up to snuff to run the winch at full capacity.

http://www.discoweb.org/hydraulicpump.htm

Basically, in a nutshell, he uses a higher output pump to get his 1500 psi at the winch, and then uses a bleed-valve to bleed off the extra pressure coming from the winch to the steering box, bleeding back into the return line going back to the reservoir.

This way you are not over stressing your steering box.

Is there any reason why I should be weary of doing this?

 

Why hydraulic? What if you happen to go through a huge watery mud hole and hydro the engine and get stuck? No engine= no hydraulic pump= no winch. At least with an electric winch you'll have the power when you need it. Plus it's way easier to install and wire up an electric winch than it is to plumb a hydraulic one.

 

Well electric vs hydraulic is another argument altogether but if you're offroading you shouldn't be going alone, and hopefully if you do get stuck that far in water your buddy wasn't dumb enough to do the same and can winch you out. If you do get that far in water, your electrical system is pretty much hosed anyway, so you would still be SOL even if you did have an electrical winch to pull you out of the hole.

So as far as the choice for hydraulic, I plan to do a lot of overlanding, and on the logging roads in Washington State there tends to be a lot of fallen trees.

I don't want to have to run the winch, let it cool and then run it some more to get a tree out of my way.

Plus, this way I dont have to run another battery in my jeep to compensate for the winch and the 5 pairs of lights on my jeep.

 

Run electric, buy a Warn XP 9.5 and turn the 5 lights off when winching and use the Optima yellow top. Plus if you are wheeling with buds switch places and take turns winching.

 

The electric winch will still work when wet.