Winch Gear Ratios

ok ive never bought a new winch before, every vehicle ive owened that had one came with it. im getting ready to order a winch for my jeep and was looking at Warn, Badland, and smittybilt. i was looking at either 8 or 10k winch if a Warn or Smitty. Bandland i was gonna get a 12 for 299 but i found out they are super slow and not water proof. While looking at Warn and smitty it gave me several different gear ratios. what do you suggest for a ratio of good strong pulling but still fairly good speed. most of the time for now itll be playing in a little mud and red clay. later itll be rock crawling plus the mud and clay. so what is an all around good ratio?

If this has already been asked im sorry i looked and looked but was unable to find one that specifically went over gear ratios. ive seen one on brands of winch, etc but not one on ratios pulling power and such. if this is in the wrong section im sorry please move it to where it needs to be Admins.

It is not a dumb question. To be honest, I have never paid attention to gear ratio. What I have looked at is line speed. But there is a trade off. The fast winches do pull down under load and draw more amperage than the slow line speed winches. You might also look at Superwinch. They have a fast line speed winch for a good price. The line speed is nice when reeling in the line with no load though and I would not trade that now that I have one.

see im wanting a balance between speed and power because the red clay and mud here just sucks you down and can over work a winch in a heartbeat. i never paid attention to line speed. ill have to go back and re read. thanks!

so this is for the smittybuilt XRC8 winch:
According to the vendor, this Smittybilt XRC8 Winch has a line speed of 37.2 Feet per minute under no load, 18 Fpm at 2000lbs., 13.1 Fpm at 4000 lbs., 10.2 Fpm at 6000 lbs., and 8.2 Fpm at 8000 lbs. I hope this information is helpful. Thanks!
now is 8.2 fast slow or medium?

good question ......I do winch comps here and see some cool set ups

what fast ....GOD WINCH........:smiley-laughing021::smiley-laughing021:


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgx1hc5GikU"]Superwinch 2011 - Craig's "God" winch in action - YouTube[/ame]

One of the admins on here (msmoorenburg) has the xrc8 and he's winched me and several of the other guys on here out of some extremely sticky situations. For the price, that's the winch I'd go with. Very impressed with that thing.

what to look at is size ,speed ,and amps. A fast winch is nice but if it draw a lot of amps and you drain your battery and have to stop and re-charge it will put more load on your charging sestem. Also look at how far you will be when you pull the gear changes with ever wrap of line on the drum/spool. A 8000 will drop to a 6000 very fast dering a long pull.

i think ill get the XRC8. its got a special going on right now and comes with pretty much everything. thanks for the advice guys