Lord, I'm feeling very old........
I started thinking back about PTO winches, and realized just how long its been...
I actually predate truck mounted winches!
I won't go into the whole story, since it goes back before 1963, just let me say, I have a lot of experience with winches. Overall, I prefer PTO. Like bent77 said, electric will pull you out when the motor won't run, but sooner or later you run out of battery without the motor running. Unless you invest in a huge alternator, you run out even with the motor running.
As for my qualifications, my '60 CJ5 had a Konig PTO shaft driven winch that I did terrible things with. Then my '79 F150 had a Braden PTO shaft driven winch, that I actually suspended the truck in midair between an anchor tree and a stuck dump truck.
When I bought my '89 F250, then had changed the exhaust system to the point I could not get a shaft from the PTO to the front of the truck. So, I turned the PTO around backwards to clear the auto transmission bell housing, put a large hydraulic pump on it, and put a hydraulic driven Braden PTO on the front.
As for PTO adapters for a 205, they are plentiful and not too expensive. Both my '79 and my '89 used 205s
.
Here are some pictures of the latest:
https://ck5.com/forums/threads/hydraulic-pto-winch-pics.249796/
And here is a link to a picture of a 205 adapter.
https://ck5.com/forums/threads/winch-idea-input-help.324683/#post-3608612
It looks exactly like the one on my old '79. Same make, bet it was the same model.
As for between the rails mount, here is my story on that.
Along about 1963, my father saw an ad in a magazine for something new. It was an electric winch designed to go on the front of a pickup truck so you did not have to dig yourself out any more.
He bought it, put it on his friend's truck, and it did not work. Later, we figured out what was wrong, modified it, and a friend of mine made a lot of money building and selling them.
Meanwhile, my father and his friend had gotten the winch bug. He ordered one from Braden. There was a misunderstanding, and it came in on a railway flat car. Darn near bigger than a pickup truck.
It was sent back, and a normal sized one sent.
I was fairly young, so a lot of the details I never knew, and others I have forgotten. But they mounted the winch on the front of his friend's Chevy pickup.
He either ordered it with, or swapped in a 4 or 5 speed transmission so the PTO would fit. In 1963, for 1/2 ton pickups, there were no such things as overload front springs, or aftermarket kits.
The winch was too heavy for that truck. He went down dirt roads bottoming out in front, and sometimes the front bumper would actually scoop up sand and throw it on the windshield.
They took it back to the equipment shop that installed it at first, and they got creative.
At this point, sadly, I run out of details. I was not involved in the planning or construction, nor was I curious enough to crawl under and look. So I do not know how they did what they did. I can report the results.
They cut a hole in the bed of the truck, right behind the cab. Mounted the winch in the bed, with the cable going down. I have never known how they got a drive-shaft from the PTO adapter on the side of the transmission to the winch.
I have always wondered if they had a intermediate right angle gear box or if maybe the transmission PTO opening was far enough back that the shaft could go straight up to the winch.
If anybody out there is familiar enough with that vintage transmission and truck to know where the PTO opening is in relation to the back of the cab Please let me know.
However they got the power to the winch, the cable went straight down obviously to a heavy pulley, then through a couple of guide blocks to a hole cut in the front bumper. The roller fairlead was mounted to the front bumper.
Someone built a heavy wooden box that sat over the winch and protected it from the elements and kept things from getting caught in it. I rode hundreds of miles through the woods kneeling on that box as I was growing up.
The setup worked well, I suppose. It had its problems, but not due to the design. The guy who owned the truck was hard on it. Especially since he had the winch. He was not afraid to put that 2wd truck in the worst places you could imagine, since he had the huge winch to drag him out.
Over the years, he hit stumps, and damaged the guides under the truck. Once crimping it down so bad he could not get the cable out and had to walk out. To pay out the cable, he put the winch in reverse. It had a freewheel lever on the winch, but he did not use it.
AHA! I just realized something. When he died, we got the winch back. I used it on the front of my '79 F150 with heavier springs. When I went to put it on, I had to have a piece welded on the freewheel lever because it was sawed off.
If the winch had been mounted in the back of the truck with the input shaft facing down, that lever would have kept it from fitting flush to the back of the cab. I bet that was why it was sawed off.
The only other problem he had, was also related to hitting stumps. He managed to bend one of the guides, and it let the cable rub on a cross-member. Over a couple of years, it sawed the cross-member so deep that it broke and had to be welded.
Other than those problems, it did a great job for many many years.
The single worst thing that we ever did with that setup, was the stainless steel cable. Back then, no one around here ever heard of galvanized cable. On my Jeep, when I bought a new cable, the first thing I did, was buy a full quart of cheap motor oil, and slowly pour the entire quart on the spool of new cable.
Then whenever I put oil in the engine, I would let the can sit on the cable open side down for a while to let the dregs drip out onto the cable. What with dirt, dust, bugs, and small birds sticking to the cable, it made an incredible mess.
But the cable did not rust.
With his under the box, it never got oiled, and had to be replaced often.
One day, my father found a source for stainless cable, and bought enough to fill the winch. That was a disaster. I'm sure that it would have been fine on a normal winch. But with all the damaged guides, it was a choice slice of Hell.
The guides damaged the cable. Everytime a strand of the cable broke, it would spring out in a hook shape with with razor sharp ends. I swear that you could just walk within 2 feet of that cable and it would reach out and tear out a hunk of flesh.
And heaven help you if you were between the front of the truck and the end of the cable if someone let go of the hook.
It would spring back, and coil like a striking rattlesnake. Even though I was young, I was smart enough and fast enough it never got me, but my father, his friend, and a couple of other people got snared over the years, and it was all hands on deck to get him out.
They finally got rid of the cable and went back to regular steel core.
OK, you just posted while I was writing this, so I need to answer. You mount a hydraulic motor on the winch when you want to go hydraulic. They are also plentiful and cheap. My Braden was ordered as a hydraulic drive, so the motor was sorta built in. You could rig a mount for a hydraulic motor, but I would see if Braden would sell you a kit if you want to go that way.
I do not recommend trying to use the power steering pump unless its a fairly small winch. Mile Marker uses the pump, and it seems to work fine for them. But they use a small motor.
My big 12,000 winch, for full speed and power needs about 15-20 gallons per minute at about 1,000 psi. A power steering pump puts out about 2 gpm.
Let me post this, think about it, and let me know your next questions. Bottom line is, if you can easily go shaft drive, its more simple.
