New Garage has morphed into New House :)

Storing the HD arrangement with the drawbar and bolts would be more difficult, for sure.  But the bolt-only arrangement should be easy to store.  

However, a drawbar-only approach puts the winch high enough above the floor that there is considerable leverage, and unless you have a lot of concrete around that receiver in the floor that may be a problem.  And, even if you do you'll have to look at your winch to see if it can be used vertically.  Some have a cover over the spool so can't.  And even if yours can the piece will be difficult to store as the drawbar will be sticking out.  But, it would be handy to use on a vehicle that has a receiver.

You guys are coming up with some good input, thanks. :)

My exclusive experience with one of these 12V winches comes from a similarly-sized one mounted to my brother's trailer, I should take pictures of that sometime.

They dug a pit at least 2' deep below that thing in the cement, the steel pin in the receiver will keep it there.

The bolts are approximately 15" square c to c, and I can put something 20" x 20" into that storage thing.

But I like the idea of connecting it to any vehicle with such a hitch! But I'd still need HD battery power back there, none of my batteries are in the trunk.

~~

Fuzzy reminded me on FTE that I haven't updated you guys in a while, so here are some current pictures. :)

It kinda looks like a Sears showroom atm and I still need to find new homes for some things, but I'm starting to use it for garage purposes again. :)













Remember that exposed steel I-beam that's gonna become a trolley someday?
I painted it Denver Broncos Orange. :)

I used this kit I found at Lowes on the garage floor:

https://www.lowes.com/pd/Epoxy-Coat-2-Part-Dark-Gray-High-Gloss-Garage-Floor-Epoxy-Kit-Actual-Net-Contents-384-fl-oz/3547112


It's got two coats, I sanded down the first one as best I was willing because the sprinkles didn't come out right, I tried to do the floor in 3 independent sections wearing only tennis shoes, that didn't work. So I got some spiked shoes and re-coated it. It came out "OK" but I know where the faults are.

Looks good, Chris!

On the winch, with as much concrete you have below you should be good to mount the winch on the drawbar.  However, I doubt many drawbars are rated at what your winch is capable of pulling, meaning 5000 lbs.  The issue is that drawbars expect the majority of the load to be in tension, like trying to stretch them as you tow the trailer.  But you would be using it as if you had 5000 lbs of tongue weight on it, and I don't think it will take that w/o bending where it comes out of the receiver.

If what your are going to pull comes easily then maybe you'd be ok.  But, you don't have any way of keeping the drawbar in the receiver, so you need to make sure that you never have any upward forces.  And the only way of doing that is to make sure that the winch is higher than where the hook is attaching to the vehicle.  The higher you go the more leverage you have, and at some point the leverage times the pulling force will be greater than the wall of the drawbar can stand.

I think the safest thing is a plate that goes on the floor and uses the bolts in the floor to hold it down and a piece of the drawbar to prevent it from sliding.  Next is to use just the bolts in the floor.  Last is to just use the drawbar in a vertical position and the winch attached to it.

So, if it were me I'd make the plate w/a piece of drawbar through it for use in the garage.  Then I'd weld a plate to another drawbar that could be put in the receiver of any vehicle whenever.  It only takes 4 bolts to swap the winch to another plate.  I do that from the front of Big Blue to my trailer.

And, speaking of moving it, you'll need to be able to connect your battery to it.  While you can disconnect via the connections on the battery or winch, take a look at the connectors I used on Big Blue, shown in this post.