Hydraulic winches, any thoughts?

[1968 Pontiac]

Let me start from the beginning; I was thinking about installing an electric winch on my miska car trailer. Thought that would be easier than using my 3200Lb hand winch which I'm using now. It actually works just fine, but I bought a car dolly last week, so I figured it would be so much nicer using the 3200Lb hand winch on there, rather than trying to push the car up the ramps. I was thinking of installing a front hitch on my 92 K2500 to hold the trailer and use a winch mounted on the truck to pull the car onto the trailer. I started checking pricing on winches and found a used hydraulic winch at what seems to be a reasonable price, but it doesn't have a PTO. I did a quick search, but couldn't find a pto. Am I getting into this over my head? Should I just stick to an electric winch? I don't go four wheeling. We don't get much snow, so there's not much of a chance of getting stuck anywhere, so the only thing I would use the winch for is pulling cars onto the trailer once in a while. Any thoughts would be appreciated. Thanks.

[horse482]

An electric winch will be a lot easier to install than an hydraulic. You are going to have to have some kind of pump to run a hyd. winch either a belt driven pump or a pto. That is going to raise the cost of they hyd. option. For the amount of use the winch is going to get you will be better off with electric, if you check the internet there are some decent winches for good prices, you could also look in to remote mount with a receiver hitch. Warn offers a remote system, may be something that you could build yourself.

[J-Ri]

I'd definately go with electric. For the reasons horse482 said, plus with hydraulic you have to worry about leaks. If I were you, I'd mount the winch on the trailer instead of the truck. That way you dont have to take the trailer off, put it on the front, take it off again, and put it back on the rear. You also dont have that extra weight slowing you down when you're not towing the trailer, and you can keep the winch out of the elements most of the time.

[1968 Pontiac]

I was talking to one of my neighbours that has a similar car trailer and he mounted his electric winch on the trailer. But he has the same problem as me; no post to mount the winch to, so he mounted his in the tool box, cut a hole in the box for the winch cable, and installed a fairlead at the hole. I think I'm going to go with that setup. The only thing he did which I wouldn't is install the battery in the tool box (a top post to boot) so there's a great chance of corroding a hole through the box after a number of years, or arching the battery, as the box isn't very high. He doesn't use the trailer brakes, nor tdoes he have a seven prong plug at the back of his alomost new F%$d Explorer (I think) so he has no auxillary power at the hitch, only the standard four prong plug. I was thinking of wiring a seven prong plug into the front side of the box, then I could use an 'extension' cord to get power from the plug at the hitch to operate the winch as required. Does anyone have a size/type/brand of electric winch they would recommend?