Wotcher all, a friend of mine wants to add a winch to his landy, at the moment I don't know what his spec is, e.g. how much to pull and how often, but even without those two variables, I've heard that electric winches need to be rebuilt regularly due to muck, and also tend to operate at more of a strain on the vehicle due to the electrics and battery wear. I know about that kind of thing but don't know if hydraulics have issues of their own. On a defender with no aircon it seems that a hydraulic winch wouldn't really be harder to fit than an electric and would probably be less hassle as there's less components working at near their limit than there are in an electrical system, but this is just stuff I've heard and don't have any direct experience (I have a tirfor and have rarely needed it).
So, any comments on the above? A friend of mine who's used electrics thinks he'll go for hydraulic next time as he reckons it'll be less hassle, but we don't know for sure yet. Has anyone got direct experience of both and what were your findings? I know that hydraulics are supposed to be able to go on all day, it's mostly reliability, ease of fitment and ease of maintenance that we're thinking of here.
Cheers all!