What size winch

New Toyota 4Runner. Never owned a Toyota in my life

I see people talking about winches and I was wondering what weight limit do you really need for winching yourself out. I see people talking about 12k pound winch. Do you really need that much winching weight?

 

If I remember correctly, warn 10,000 and 12000 are the same machine with different gears. The 12k runs really slow but no additional weight. You are probably fine with 10k unless you sink it up to the hood in mud!

 

While we don't have a winch on our 4Runner, we do have one on a side by side UTV. The times I've used the winch, being stuck in mud was worse than just being hung up. Believe there's sort of a "vacuum" . For that reason I would go with a 10K winch, look at how much a 4Runner weighs, then add any adverse condition, like mud. I would rather have enough power than not enough.

 

12K is a bit of overkill for a 4Runner. That said, I have nothing against overkill.

10K is pretty ideal for most of us, especially those who have extra weight. The line can usually be doubled with a snatch block to make things easier on the winch.

I've used my 10K Warn for self recovery, to recover others, and for other things. I'm pretty satisfied with it.

I recently used it to pull a Tacoma sideways on a single line pull, and it had no problem. I should note that the Taco wasn't buried in mud or anything. It was just in a bad spot and needed to get realigned to get out.

It seems that the standard is to multiply the GVWR × 1.5, which ends up at 9150-9450# for a 5th gen.

 

I thought there was a 'formula' for winch rates, X 1.5 seems ballpark. The side by side has a 3500# Warn, 1200# machine, a little overkill.

 

This is how Warn recommends sizing a winch. I'm not sure how much more precise one would need to be, as they're generally only available in so many different ratings (8K, 10K, 12K seem pretty typical across manufacturers, with some exceptions).

Here's the article on Warn's website:

https://www.warn.com/how-to-choose-a-winch-for-jeeps

Here's a quote:

"To start, it’s always a good idea to follow our formula for selecting a winch for any truck or SUV. The formula is simply the vehicle’s GVWR (Gross Vehicle Weight Rating) multiplied by 1.5. For example:

GVWR x 1.5 = minimum pulling capacity"

If you look around, it seems that most articles about choosing a winch use the same formula. One I found stated that this is the minimum, and one should go higher, but didn't specify how much.

I did see one article that recommended 1.5-2X your vehicle's loaded weight, which might put some of us in the 12K category. But, this will only really come into play on a single line pull.

I always try to do a double line pull, so I find 10K to be more than sufficient. (Edit) That's not to say that a 12K is a bad idea, though.