LOL
If you're not getting stuck you are not challenging yourself.
The FUN is in seeing the LIMITS of what you can do....and you need to at least bump against the limits to know where they ARE.
Its like in racing, I used to design/set up suspensions for racing...and some people wanted to race vintage stuff, like Bug Eye Sprites and Saab Sonnets, etc...because the limits were lower on old iron, and you could HOWL around turns in four wheel drifts hell bent for leather at speeds that you could actually survive a screw up.....IE: The fun started at a reasonable speed.
Others wanted nothing but raw speed, and would have to race in a higher class....and their cars would be boring as hell at the same speeds the others were barely holding on at, and they had to go MUCH faster to get THEIR cars to a fun point.....
...and OTHERS had the MONEY to REALLY blast along, and they could make BOTH of those other guys rides look like pylons as they blew by them on the same track.....but they'd be bored to tears at pylon speeds, as their cars were not even close to being challenged at those rates, etc.
So, even if you are building a rock buggy that is also a swamp buggy, on gummy custom earth mover tires, with active suspension, blah blah blah...you will get stuck
if you are doing it RIGHT.
If you'll never get stuck, you are WASTING your mods.
MasterPull is the best winch line from what I've seen.
As mentioned, if you want to save $, use the steep rope, and be careful.
A winch is like insurance, so, if you're the guy that would pay less for a health insurance policy, if they gave a discount on the policy for people who agreed to spin a wheel to determine the percent of 0 to 100% coverage you'd get on each claim....
...then a cheap winch is cool.
My rule of thumb is that you simply determine if you will ever NEED a winch...IE: Will NOT having a winch ever be a problem. If you wheel were you ar who you wheel with getting stuck would mean missing work the next day, or being stranded in the boonies overnight, or having the tide come in and submerge a rig, and so forth...then a cheap winch is a bad investment.
If you wheel where you never NEED a winch, you could just not GET a winch, as you don't NEED one....or, get a winch-like thing to weigh down your bumper and look winch-like at the mall parking lot, etc.
That way, if you (or another rig you're with) get stuck, it just doesn't MATTER if it doesn't work.
That Tabor has a manual that says if the winch gets submerged, you need to send it in for service, as it will then corrode.
So, that means you'd take it off to wheel in wet locations...unfortunately, those are the kinds of locations you need a winch in sometimes.
The duty cycle looks like its ~ as low as it can go, and it looks like it is pulling ~ 4.5 feet per minute under load.
If its as bad as it looks, if it needs say 14 minutes of cooling for every 2 minutes of winching...
That means that a simple 50' recovery would mean:
2 min at 4.5 fpm = 9', then rest for 14 min. (9' done so far) = 16 minutes spent so far
2 min at 4.5 fpm = 9', then rest for 14 min. (18' done so far) = 32 minutes spent so far
2 min at 4.5 fpm = 9', then rest for 14 min. (27' done so far) = 48 minutes spent so far
2 min at 4.5 fpm = 9', then rest for 14 min. (36' done so far) = 64 minutes spent so far
2 min at 4.5 fpm = 9', then rest for 14 min. (45' done so far) = 80 minutes spent so far
1 min at 4.5 fpm = 4.5', FINALLY DONE. (Close enough...) =
Almost an hour and a half to do one 50' recovery.
Do the same 50' recovery with a high duty cycle winch pulling ~ 10 fpm:
5 minutes at 10 fpm - DONE
So, you are out with yer budz, and someone gets stuck...and you guys lose an hour and a half getting unstuck, instead of 5 minutes.
Takes a lot of the fun out of a day if you lose that much wheeling time....and it takes a lot of the fun out of the day if you have to choose such safe routes that you never get stuck too.
So, there's really no WRONG answer, but, there are ALWAYS compromises....
PRICE - VS - RELIABILITY and SPEED