Has Harbor Freight Lost Their Mind? - APEX BADLAND

if you would have told me two weeks ago that i would have ever looked at a harbor freight winch as a serious option i would have laughed at you i was in the car industry when i had a wrecking yard and the harbor freight wenches were ubiquitous on car haulers because they were cheap you know you could get them for under a couple hundred bucks but to actually seriously consider one for a four wheel drive well that was not really an option when i did the bumper video uh trying to when we're trying to pick out what bumper to get for the new super duty the harbor freight guys called and said hey we actually have a winch that's good and uh you know when he was talking to me on the phone i was like yeah what's your impression of good because i know wenches i worked at warren i actually built winches there for several years i know i know all about them you know i've grown grown up with them i've had them on every rig that i've owned i've never had anything that wasn't a warrant he said let me send you one let me send you one take a look at it and you be the judge of it i'll just leave it at that and so that's what we're going to do today i didn't realize that they were making good grief how many tapes are we going to get on here i didn't realize that they were starting to make some high-end some nicer tools i mean i remember when harbor freight first came on the scene i remember the first time i went to their store because you went in there and it was shockingly cheap right it was shockingly cheap but the downside with a lot of that stuff was what good is a tool that's really cheap if it's of just such poor quality that it's just not usable so for me the only thing i really have used for from harbor freight are specialty things like if i need a spring compressor or just something that i'm going to use maybe one time and i can't justify buying snap-on or something like that then you know i'll go that route but i would not have considered a winch but so i went online and i went to compare this is actually a direct competitor with the warren is it the xenon i think the 12 000. that's the exact winch that i kind of had my eye on that i was going to put on the truck on the new bumper and this is almost a carbon copy of that so let's take a look at it i'm going to run some comparisons that i found online on the warren site and we'll see how this stacks up the fit and finish and is this a viable option because if it is that's really tempting because it's one third the cost of a xenon i think a xenon is close to eighteen hundred dollars brand new these come in under 600. five five something if i remember right let's take a look at it and and see how it stacks up to the one first off the packaging is really nice oh this is not a paid endorsement our deal was they sent it and said take a look at it if you like it use it if not don't do what you will with it no talking points no nothing so i know that upsets a lot of people but let me ask you this if they offered to you to send you a new badlands winch would you say yes of course you would so sit down and shut up all right so first off this is the fairly this is very nice this looks like a forged or cast fairlead now you can't use a roller fairlead when you use synthetic line and this is equipped with synthetic line but i'm not a big fan of that branding um it's okay i mean it's a it's okay i mean it's not the only thing i'd have maybe show something as little nondescript give customers an option uh whether or not they want to promote something like that that's just my opinion my particular pet peeve forged hook you don't get a forged hook with a worn xenon that is an after market that you have to buy these are really really strong that is a good looking hook for 3 8 cable that's a high quality item right there that's really nice good finish good looking hook that look looks nice off of the the front of your lit winch and of course we got these guys here which are really popular kind of hang down there and look cool so far so good now this is wireless we'll have to see how that's going to work when we get it hooked up the wireless i've never had a wireless winch before it sounds nice and convenient but my one concern i do have is that the reliability of that it's hard to beat just an old school wire you know when when they go bad just as far as my impressions of this looks like it's got a magnet on it that's kind of cool so you could stick it yeah you could stick it on it seems to be strong enough you can stick it on it could be a little stronger but it seems to be adequate stick it on the side of your body or whatever so you don't lose it doesn't fall on the ground forward reverse in and out fit and finish of it it's okay oh there is a wire i don't know if that's for charging or what that is here's the cable so that's good that's the best of both worlds that's smart if they did that i would like to have a wired option uh as well in case i just don't have i have issue with the connectability cable right there not premium vinyl but they're decent it's decent remember we got to remember you know it's the third the cost of a warrant so they've got a you know you're not you can't you can't have everything right looks like we have a mounting plate here of some sort i don't know what that's for and then the winch itself and all the cabling so it's ready to go all you got to do is hook it up to your battery what do we have going on here i don't know what that is let's look into that all right let's pull it out oh here's some more wires so what size wires did they give us looks like pretty decent cable so this looks like what maybe a number a number four or number what size is that no maybe it gets bigger than that maybe a two it's probably a two or something there all right let me let me yank this out oh we got more stuff in here uh more cables mounting hardware what's in this box oh a disconnect that's a nice bonus that's a really nice bonus actually so there's a hard disconnect like you find in a marine application or a boat so that you can turn it off so that you don't have any phantom draw or just so no one could use it that is nice that's it that's that's actually a nice feature there i wouldn't even have thought to put one of those on that i've never had one on a winch before but i will now battery switch and then finally we've got our hardware here uh some brass connectors and boots and looks like good decent bolts too and these are even stainless steel these cap bolts here so that's a hit right there that's nice very nice okay now for the winch let's pull it out here let's talk first impressions we'll do all four sides here the build of this winch it's very clean and very nice it feels like a quality item this is all all metal metal solenoid cover there's hardly any plastic on it i don't even is that metal too i don't know if i that might be plastic cover there i don't really see any plastic on it man it's nice what a bonus to come with synthetic line um this is great there is even sheathing protective sheathing on the first few feet of it that you know this the downside with the synthetic line there's hardly any downside but is that it is not as durable as wire rope but it's so much safer and it's so much better to handle i mean you really can't compare the two but it is a little bit fragile so that that's a nice touch that sheathing on there i have not had a winch with this before i've used this in come alongs but not on a particular winch our bottom bottom feet are going to mount just like a worn now on the warrens and i only assume that the badland is similar that they i don't know often check into this can you mount them feet forward or feet down either way i don't know why you couldn't but 80 feet of 3 inch 3 8 inch synthetic line on there is nice that's perfect but a very handsome a good looking winch it really reminds me a lot of the of a xenon over here on the side hold this here back for you we have this is our our gear side here where the planetaries are in there this is our clutch for freewheel a big robust handle with good detents in it it feels really good and clearly labeled free spool and engage this is a big hit for me i was concerned about that wireless but there's a big heavy rubber cover on here that exposes an override for that wireless so it says here turn wireless switch to off after winching so you can override and plug your controller i'm assuming it's a five pin right in here with arrows that line up there that's nice that's that makes me really happy that's a huge win for me because i don't trust that wireless stuff to be honest i'll use i'd use it would be if it was just because it's convenient but this is a really nice big heavy duty waterproof plug on the site this actually i wrote down these numbers for you because i wasn't really familiar with this ipx rating so i checked it so the ipx rating on the warren is ips ipx8 and what that means is it's basically waterproof that you can kind of submerge it down to a couple feet or so this is ipx 9k which i had to look that up but that's that's a much higher standard than the warren this is pressure washer safe and not only pressure washer but hot water like for a hot seat so 80 celsius i think is what it said on the site so this is got a higher a quite a bit higher waterproof rating and dust rating than the warren's going to have it's better sealed i don't know how they did exactly how they what about doing that but very nice unit again all good decals that's all metal unlike a lot of the harbor freight stuff you know their castings and such have been pretty crude um but uh this one is better decals are they're okay probably come off but i'd probably take that off anyway on the back end here we have our main lead here to the uh the solenoids will be up in here that's when you hear that click click that clicking that's what uh what activates those so you can have short runs go to the cable but this is a nice touch they've got it in sheathing so that you're gonna probably run this through a grill or through a bumper and you've got wear protection on there just an extra step a guy doesn't have to do which i appreciate that they've even shrink wrapped it here and zip tied it here's your chassis ground pretty nice pretty nice this is not what i would typically expect from harbor freight at all can we get in there that's just probably more of a dust cover than anything else here's our ground for our motor our motor will be over on this side now this is series wound just like a warren and the reason why siri a series wound motor is really good for winching because what it does is it gives you instant torque right away it doesn't take it a long time to spool up so if you need massive power with low rpms series wound is the way to go so it's just a copy like probably a similar style as the as the warren now this is not a waterproof casing here this is probably just for looks because you can see the motors inside there these motors are basically just big kind of big starter motors is what uh what they used to use i worn when i worked there they used to source their motors i think from brazil here on this side we just have their logo also in probably it looks like aluminum that nice castings nice good quality stickers and very nice components the hardware looks nice this is all welded the hook is excellent that's really sharp the fairlead is really pretty it's got a nice finish on it this is a nice nice unit just immaculately finished you know you can't get this from machine you gotta there's got to be you have to have human hands to get finishes like this and someone's cared about this and this is important too because that's the that's basically the face of the winch that's what you see you're going to see this right here on the front and you don't want it to look all shabby and rusty hardware is nice galvanized and stainless steel boots just like warren used to used to put in there to cover your electrical connections solid brass connectors um you see i mean it's even got your butt connectors in there looks like in case you need to extend that chassis ground this is thoughtful not the nicest disconnect it's not like a perco but it it is brass and solid copper you can see on there so it's not it's not at all garbage by any means one thing you sometimes you what you see with the overseas stuff is just the plastic the choices of plastic but this is you know the more i look at it the better it actually looks that's not bad that's a that's that is a nice bonus though i do like that i don't have any idea what this thing is i don't know i don't know but that is and then this looks like a mounting plate of some sort which i'm not sure is that for the what that is either but it's not important we can get into that when we look at it good cables heavy cables properly made lots of cable enough to go everywhere the i yeah i think you know just from a consumer standpoint i'd pay an extra 50 bucks for something like this to have this this portion here is really important important to me and it has to be really really tough uh and it's what i grab and it kind of reminds me of of the of the experience and the quality of it when i grab this because this is my interface with the winch yeah you know i don't know it's okay i just i'm just not a fan of that vinyl uh cable but i know this is not prime it's primarily made to use without that so i'm splitting hairs here but the switch is it's okay it feels pretty good actually press mode three seconds and turn wireless on and off so there must be some sort of bluetooth connectability here i don't assume that this piece is waterproof maybe you're supposed to keep that cup that i tore off and threw on the floor yeah i think so don't throw this out like i did you're going to need that because i can see exposed circuit boards in there and from having these remotes i mean when you're really in the weeds and you're into the middle of the night and you're winching out in the snow these controllers need to be tough they take a lot of abuse so you know this the problem with this here is that it's going to get lost you know the warren controllers are going to be waterproof so just i don't think this is a deal breaker at all but don't overlook as a manufacturer don't overlook this sort of thing because i don't care how good the winch is and how nice the fair lead is and how good the gears and the clutch system are if this fails or if this breaks and it doesn't work then you're really in trouble unless can you override it over here wireless i don't know that that now that would be slick i've i've had problems with these before even with the warns if you could maybe in a future iteration make this so you had a you could actually control the wedge here apart from this if you lost it or ran over it or broke it that would be a super super nice feature but i don't know we'll look into that when we get into the install so let's wrap up with my uh final thoughts here i just checked on both websites and here currently so this list for 5.99 and the warren xenon list for 1780. they're very similar they they have i mean obviously this was inspired by the xenon winch they even have the same cone braking system which is really nice so my initial impressions on this is that this feels like a quality item that is really well put together and it's a handsome winch a very nice package twelve thousand pounds and the price is i mean that's that's a good price for a twelve thousand pound wench i know you know i know a lot of guys have issues with buying stuff overseas and i get that you know i i understand that 100 and it's one thing if you know a lot of cases i'm willing to pay double uh for you know i know mrs w said you know i'm willing to pay double sometimes for organic food for my family but i'm not going to pay triple so when you're talking 1800 versus 600 you know that's a pretty pretty wide goal and if it comes down to i mean this is achievable attainable by a lot more guys you can scrape up 600 bucks a whole lot easier than you can scrape up a couple grand because by the time you add a forged hook you know you're going to want to be look cool on the front you don't have that in an accessory or so and and the warrant doesn't offer the wireless either um that's important to you by the time you do that you know now you're looking at a third the cost of a warrant which it is an awesome product i'm not running it down whatsoever i used to build them i understand i owned i've owned six of them but this is a very very nice item just from initial impressions so well done so i was excited to hear from the harbor freight folks and i they were telling me the guy i spoke with on the phone was really a nice guy he actually was kind of new there he came over from four-wheel parts whole four-wheel wholesale four-wheel parts wholesale the four-wheel drive shop and said that um you know he's kind of been involved with this and they want to start producing some nicer things so what i offer to them is i would love to work with harbor freight you know what i'd like to do in the future is i'd like to get so we don't have we have to run ads on the videos anymore that we can have a handful of key sponsors that we could run 60 or 90 second mid-roll ads in the re right in the middle of the video and not have to deal with all those deals or all those advertisements breaking up the stories and all that so i told them i would love to work with harbor freight and if we could if they're going to produce high quality items i'm not interested in the and the other stuff i don't want interested in that low quality stuff but if they're going to be making nice items like this i would love to do some comparisons you know if they're going to make a good floor jack let's see how it stacks up against the snap-on and if a guy can consistently buy it for less than half then that's a good option it's hard to justify paying 1800 for a winch i would take a i would take a hard look at this but we'll see when we test it but that'll i'll look forward to that anyway enough of my rambling thanks for watching thanks for the guys at harbor freight for sending this out so we could take a look at it i appreciate that and then hopefully we can get to do some more with those guys in the future so thanks for watching may god bless you and your families please keep us in your prayers and we'll see you all on the next video

Channel: Wranglerstar

Views: 1,721,224

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Id: sOuJrzFITgo

Length: 20min 1sec (1201 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 25 2021