The Rugged Ridge 8500 lb. Winch is a durable, affordably priced winch for the vehicle used as a daily driver or the weekend warrior. This winch comes with a 5.5 hp series wound motor that will give you great performance and many years of operation. This unit comes with a 3 stage planetary gear box with a 172.8:1 gear ratio. All exterior hardware is stainless steel to provide years of quality service.
This winch can be purchased with the synthetic rope also. Synthetic winch rope is lighter and considerably stronger than the wire rope. The Rugged Ridge Synthetic Winch Rope is constructed of Dyneema SK-75 fiber imported from the Netherlands. This revolutionary fiber is the same material used to make ballistic body armor. The synthetic winch rope is easy to handle during winching operations but the main thing I like about it that is does not store kinetic energy. If the cable were to break under load, it will just drop to the ground. On the other hand, wire rope stores kinetic energy and will have a backlash effect coming back at the operator if it fails under a heavy load.
I currently have a Rugged Ridge 8500 lb. Synthetic Winch on my TJ Wrangler. This winch has worked flawlessly for several years now. The synthetic cable is extremely easy to use and you don’t have to worry about frayed or kinked cables cutting your hands. It would be hard to go back to a wire rope winch after using the synthetic.
Baseline 4x4 Outfitters 