5 Useful Harbor Freight Badland Accessories To Keep With Your Winch

As you may expect from a massive hardware store chain, Harbor Freight maintains a surprisingly large rolodex of in-house brands. It may sell plenty of other hardware names, but keeping you shopping in its own systems ensures you’ll always be back to shop. These various brands cater to just about any subset of hardware you can think of, even more niche interests like power winches.

Speaking of which, Harbor Freight’s in-house brand for winches is Badland, which specializes in rugged mechanisms for purposes like off-roading. While Badland offers a selection of different winches for your lugging needs, a motorized rope can’t do all of the work of lugging all on its lonesome. This is why Badland also offers various accessories for increasing and improving your winch’s capabilities. If you’re already shopping for a Badland winch at your local Harbor Freight, you might as well pick up a few of the brand’s highly-rated accessories to get the most possible utility out of it. For more information on how we selected the following Badland products, check out the bottom of the page for our methodology.

Extend your reach with the ATV/UTV Synthetic Rope & Fairlead Kit

Arguably, the most vital component of a winch besides the actual motor mechanism is the rope. You can have the most impressive winch motor in the world, but if there’s no rope attached, all it’s going to do is sit there and make noise. Badland’s winches all come with ropes included, naturally, but let’s say you want a more specialized rope. Specifically, you want a rope that’s better suited for smaller vehicles. In this case, that’s a job for the Badland ATV/UTV Synthetic Rope & Fairlead Kit, available at Harbor Freight for $34.99.

This high-strength polymer rope is designed to be an ideal replacement for any ATV or UTV-mounted winch, Badland-branded or otherwise. The rope is made up of thick, braided polyethylene, offering competitive strength, durability, and general resistance to unseemly stretching. On the end of it, you’ve got a light, yet sturdy cast aluminum fairlead, built to prevent binding and protect the rope. With this whole package, you should be good to lug loads of approximately 3,000 pounds. As an added bonus, the kit comes bundled with a heat-resistant sleeve for extra longevity.

Harbor Freight users have given this rope kit a 4.4 out of five rating. Users agree it’s a strong and reliable rope and fairlead, attaching just fine to ATV winches for purposes like yanking down dead tree branches. Even if you don’t use it for a winch, it’s a good rope in general, with one user using it to create a backyard tire swing.

Start things up with the Wireless Winch Remote Control

Typically, when you want to use a winch, you have to stand by the winch itself and manually flip a switch or lever. That’s not a huge problem if you’re lugging something simple, but if you’re working with larger, more stubborn loads, it can become difficult to manage all of that by yourself. Unless you have a friend to manage one end of the line for you, you’re going to be doing a lot of running back and forth. Instead of that, get something to handle the switch-flipping for you. Specifically, get the Badland Wireless Winch Remote Control, available at Harbor Freight for $39.99.

This two-part package includes a simple two-button remote control and a mounting receiver. The receiver (which is weather-resistant, by the way) plugs directly into the winch mechanism, mounting on with a couple of simple plates. Once the receiver is plugged in, just press the button on the remote, and it springs into action. The remote can trigger both power-in and power-out with clearly-labelled buttons so you always know which way things are going. The remote and receiver have a max range of 50 feet, so you can get a good distance away before using it.

This remote setup has a user rating of 4.4 out of five stars, with users loving how easy it is to install on their vehicles and mechanisms of choice. It works great for trucks and trailers, though one user also used it as part of the telescoping mechanism on their homemade ham radio tower.

Increase your winch’s strength with Snatch Block

The raw motorized power of a winch mechanism, combined with the tensile strength of its rope, naturally makes it a very muscular tool to have handy. That said, a rope pulling in a straight line can only generate so much strength, no matter how beefy the attached mechanism is. When raw motorized muscle falls short, you’d be surprised how much more strength you can add with a little ingenuity. See it for yourself with the Badland Snatch Block, available at Harbor Freight for $29.99.

A snatch block is a special kind of pulley used to both alleviate a winch’s load and increase its overall strength. You just thread it onto the winch’s rope, and just like that, you’ve got double the pulling capacity that your winch and rope would have on their own. The snatch block has been tested for loads weighing up to 20,000 pounds. Not only does this device make your winch stronger, it also helps to reduce the heat and amp draw of the device, which allows you to push it harder as well as set the rope at more varied angles. This makes it vital for tricky recovery jobs.

The Badland Snatch Block has a user rating of 4.8 out of five, with users agreeing that it’s perfect for difficult hauls and yanks, especially when you need to suddenly change pulling directions. One user made vital use of this device, dragging leaning trees away from their home for safe falls.

Add a winch to smaller vehicles with the ATV/UTV Mounting Plate

Winches are commonly used on muscular motor vehicles like trucks and Jeeps, but that’s hardly their only home. A winch is also great for smaller all-terrain vehicles like ATVs and UTVs. Some vehicles of these types have winches built-in, same as certain trucks. If your ATV doesn’t already have a winch setup, though, you can add one with the Badland ATV/UTV Mounting Plate, available at Harbor Freight for $7.99.

This plate is perfect for any ATV for UTV that doesn’t have fittings for a winch already. Just mount it directly to the front or back of your vehicle, and you can easily attach a 2,000 or 3,000 pounds. Badland winch. The plate is made of heavy-duty 6-gauge steel with a rust-resistant powder coat finish, so don’t worry about putting your new winch through its paces — the plate can handle it.

Harbor Freight users have given this mounting plate a rating of 4.5 out of five. Users enjoy how easy it is to install and its clear sturdy construction, perfect for accommodating hefty winches. It’s also good for mounting in general, with one user using it to attach tire tie-downs to their trailer.

Secure your line with the D-Ring Shackle

It goes without saying that any hook you’d find at the end of a winch rope is meant to be resistant to a fault. That said, if you’re looking to haul something exceptionally heavy, or are switching to more heavy-duty tools like chains, a bargain-bin hook definitely won’t cut it. You need a hook that’s just as muscular as the line it’s attached to, something that can really withstand the elements, such as the Badland D-Ring Shackle, available at Harbor Freight for $10.99.

This small, yet thick shackle is designed to fasten and secure thick lines like chain or wire for the heaviest of hauling jobs, with a rated working load of up to 9,500 pounds. The shackle is made up of high-strength forged steel with an all-weather protective coating, ensuring it won’t be worn down no matter what you subject it to.

The Badland D-Ring Shackle has a 4.8 out of five rating from Harbor Freight’s users, with cited successful use cases including hauling massive bundles of logs and dragging endangered individuals up and out of the mud.

Harbor Freight users aren’t afraid to venture into the Badland

If you put aside all the marketing lingo, the best way to know whether or not a product is reliable is through word of mouth between actual end users. This is why, to select the Badland accessories for this list, we stuck to products with a user rating of at least four out of five stars based on at least 600 user reviews.