Written/Phtography by Albert V

The newest winch in the Warn arsenal of self-recovery equipment is the XP 9500. The XP offers the highest line speed under load of all the Warn winches, even beating out the popular Warn 8275-50. Free spool speed is also a respectable 36 feet per minute.

When picking a winch for your vehicle, there are more things to consider than just brand. After you decide on a budget for a winch (spend as much as you can afford), you will have to decide what pull rating you will need. While generally the higher the rating the better, if you drive a Suzuki Samurai a 12,000 lb winch would be considered overkill – heck it might outweigh the entire rear-end of the vehicle and lift the rear tires off the ground!

The general rule of thumb is that you want a winch rated at twice the weight of your vehicle. Then again, if your buddy wheels a Suburban and you have the only winch, and it’s a 6000 lb unit, it won’t serve your purpose and you run the risk of toasting it in short order.

So for an average 3800 lb Jeep, an 8000 lb winch would be ideal. Keep in mind that winches are rated at the drum and for each wrap of cable you loose 10% of your pull capacity. This is the main reason why I usually only put 80 feet of cable or rope on my winches and carry an extra 40 feet with me. This way I get down to the drum faster for a higher pull rating and it is easier on the winch too.

Another consideration is the bumper style you plan to use. Some aftermarket bumpers are quite tight and compact and a winch with an integrated solenoid box like the Warn ti series may not work in the bumper you chose. Make sure you know what mounting system you are going to use before ordering your winch.

In our case, our Toyota 4Runner weighs in at just under 4000 lbs, so an 8000 lb winch would be more than adequate, but I tend to use my winch for others more than for myself and if I ever have to fetch my Jeep that weighs considerably, we figured a 9500 lb winch would be perfect. The mounting location on the front of the Toyota covers a large percentage of the radiator, plus the fact we wanted to get the bumper in as close to the front as possible for better approach angle meant that we would be cutting the grill to fit the winch. That meant an integrated solenoid pack winch was out for us.

Line speed can also be an important consideration. For us, load speed was more important than free spool speed, so we ended up choosing the new Warn XP9500, one of Warn’s premium winches. The 9.5xp winch features an all-new, High Output Parallel Series Wound winch motor that’s the strongest and most durable in the industry.

I’m not a fan of super high-speed free spool winches because there is too much chance of hands in the winch and they are too hard to stop. However, the XP offers the best of both worlds – speed and safety in a compact design.

The 6 hp motor, 3-stage planetary gearing and continuous duty control pack work in sync to tackle the most demanding pulls. Full-face contact drum seals, motor and end housing gaskets deliver extreme-duty water resistance. A high gloss, chip resistant powder coat finish over chromate-coated alloys provides good resistance to corrosion.

Another advantage of the new XP is its speed under load. While not rated as fast under free spool as other Warn winches (much less actually), it is 25% faster than any other Warn winch under full load. In fact, it’s faster under any load through the full load range from 2000 lbs to 9500 lbs of many other winches by Warn and other brands. Yes, even faster under full load than a 8274-50, the bench mark for fast winches. It also has the longest duty cycle for those long tough pulls we all need to do from time to time.

The winch feet offer the typical universal pattern that all winches use so will fit in a wide variety of mounts and bumpers. In our case, we built a custom bumper for the front of the Toyota so we designed it to wrap nice and tight around the winch. As we mentioned, this required us to cut the grill to get the winch as far back as possible. We mounted the remote mount solenoid box on a separate post to the side of the winch away from the front of the radiator for good airflow.

The power cables were run under the grill and straight to the dual posts on the Optima battery. With any electric winch install, if you want to get the most from your winch, make sure you have a good functioning alternator and a deep-cycle battery like an Optima. Winches draw a lot of amperage and under a full pull, a winch like the XP can draw up to 480 amps a minute. That means a 1000-amp battery will be dry with no alternator in two minutes flat. If you have a 100-amp alternator you are only replacing 100 amps per minute – I think you can do the math... It is always best to winch in bursts to keep the electric motor cool and allow your battery time to recover.

The first test of the XP came during the Tractech trail tour in Washington and it performed flawlessly. It was needed again on the Rubicon and it pulled the Toyota out of the rocks will ease. If you are looking for one of the toughest, hardest pulling winches on the market the XP just might be the winch for you.

The main reason for choosing the XP for the Toyota was its compact design. The remote box design also fulfills our desire to keep the radiator clear for good airflow to the small Toyota radiator. We wanted the winch as close to the front of the 4Runner as possible. Some bumper manufacturers like All-Pro specify that you need to cut the grill to use their bumpers. With a tubing bender close at hand and the desire to push the winch as close to the rad as possible, we chose to build our own bumper. We started by C-clamping some scrap steel to the front of the Toyota and sitting the winch on top. You can see that we cut the lower portion of the grill to get the winch far back.

The front cross member on the Toyota offers six bolt holes that are threaded for 17mm bolts which are perfect for bolting our winch plate to. The end of the frame rails needed to be ground flat so we could use a simple bent steel plate to bolt to the Toyota and mount the winch. The 3/16th plate was $60.00 from a local steel fabrication shop. The steel plate does cover some of the lower rad and if this would be a concern for you a few holes could be drilled into the plate with a hole saw for flow. So far, we haven’t had any overheating problems with the solid plate. To finish the bumper we bent up two full bars and another small hoop – a total of 20 feet of tube.

Enough of the grill needed to be removed to allow for easy reaching in to turn the control for free spool and engage.

The XP comes with a mounting bracket that uses one of the cross bar bolts on the top of the winch. Not wanting to cover any more rad than necessary, we chose to fabricate a mounting location on our new bumper to the left of the winch. This was out of the way of the rad, but not in front of the headlight.

The XP comes with the 5-pin plug system that provides the system with two back up wires. The XP also comes with a new stylish case to house the control solenoids.

With the control pack right beside the winch motor there was no problem reaching the connections on the motor. Each connection is color-coded and matches the tag on each wire from the control pack. If you plan on remote mounting the control pack under the hood, you will need to purchase new lengths of #2 copper wire because the ones supplied are quite short.

There are two long leads coming out of the control pack that are destined for the battery. You should always hook the winch directly to the battery terminals. Using a good quality battery will also enhance the usability of the winch and aid in long pulls. An Optima Yellow Top works perfect for this. With its deep cycle properties we won’t damage the battery by running it down during long pulls. The dual posts are also perfect for hooking up the positive and negative leads from the winch.

We used the XP 9500 twice this summer. First it held the Toyota in place in Naches on a precarious side slope. The second pull was below on the Rubicon trail, when the low slung Toyota grabbed onto a few big rocks and wouldn’t let go. Both times the winch worked flawlessly and pulled the Toyota with ease.