Bought a hitch and a winch

I bought a hitch off ebay, I was pleasantly surprised at how heavy duty it is when I opened the box. Weighs a good amount and feels like its made of armored steel plate or something. Bolts right up where the pintle was. I don't plan on towing a boat or camper or anything, just wanted to have a hitch to add utility things like a rack or a winch.

So i also went and got the harbor freight parking lot sale 12K winch for less than $300, and a receiver mount for it. So far I like it, I know you only get what you pay for but I took it apart and the internals look good, they made an attempt to make it water resistant with orings and gaskets.

Just bought a deep cycle battery that I will use for the winch, I won't charge it off the truck, I'll just hit it the night before with the NOCO Genius. I don't plan on pulling myself up hills, just getting unstuck if im off roading and theres no one else around.

Found a cool battery box at walmart, the lid has a built in power gauge and a couple 12v cig lighter outlets, and two posts that run thru to the battery. I can charge my phone and run the winch. lol.

I kind of like the idea of the winch being on a receiver mount, I can take it off when I want. I add a receiver on the front and put it there if I want, or I can take the winch and the battery box and use a chain or a strap have it attached to a tree on dry ground. Or even put it on someone else's truck.

How will you store the winch in the truck when you're trail driving?

Bought a receiver bracket that attaches to anything flat with 4 bolts, I am bolting it to the back of the bed, and the winch mount can slide into it and live there until i need it. Then when I'm stuck like chuck, I take it out the bed receiver, and put it into the rear receiver.

I would have just mounted it behind the front bumper but it's pretty wet on some of the FL trails...

My setup worked pretty good today. As we were leaving for the day we came across a stuck Ford Explorer. The truck they were using to pull it out was spinning and not able to get good traction. I parked the hmmwv in front of the exploder and pulled with the winch from the rear. It's a slow pull but it brought the explorer right out of the mud. They were happy, they would have been out there awhile.

I have the same winch and winch mount, and I am very happy with the set up and operation. I use the winch with my dually for pulling cars up on a trailer and logs out of the woods. Haven't been stuck - yet. We just used it to pull a broken down forklift up onto my trailer, and you could hear the winch really working and torqueing down, but pull it she did.

I'm going to baby this thing to get some life out of it. Dedicated battery, keep the winch in the bed, high and dry until I need it, and I bought a snatch pulley so I can reduce the stress on the motor when winching.

Are you running yours off the vehicle electric or a separate battery? I bought a deep cycle but I've been reading that a regular battery with more cranking amps may have been better.

This is a pretty neat idea you had and I intend to look into it as well. Do you think that receiver hitch will attach to the existing holes on a rear airlift bumper?