Synthetic Winch Lines

[collkid]

So I'm thinking about getting one for christmas. Could some one push me in the right direction? I have a Tabor 9k and the steal cable is kinked so I figure I may as well go Synthetic now.

What do you guys run? how long should it be? link maybe?


Thanks,
Jeremy

 

[time2getdirty]

masterpull xd

 

[DutchVDub]

as long as will fit on your winch, you never know when you'll need that extra foot or two to reach a good anchor point.

 

[eflores]

I agree with Dutch

 

[in4aride]

Depends on how and what you wheel. If you run some pretty retarded stuff, 50' is usually enough lol. But if you do a lot of random driving and exploring then the longer options might be better. Do you carry other straps with you as well? Have other people that wheel with you with winch or that you can anchor off of? Al lthings to take into consideration.

 

[Kiefer316]

I will be lookin into this as well after Christmas. Most likely going to go with masterpull.

 

[collkid]

That master pull is almost $400! I was thinking more in the $200 - $250 range...

 

[planefixer]

Get 80' or 100' x 3/8" dia. of Amsteel Blue and be done with it- it should be in your price range and is good stuff.Make sure to get a decent Hawse fairlead as well if you don't already have one.

 

[RockMonkey]

Get 80' or 100' x 3/8" dia. of Amsteel Blue and be done with it- it should be in your price range and is good stuff.Make sure to get a decent Hawse fairlead as well if you don't already have one.

This, just go with however much Amsteer Blue will fit on your drum. You can save money by just getting the rope from a boating supplier, and splicing in the loop for the hook yourself.

 

[Pz10420]

I just tied a bunch of bunjee cords together and get ready for a fun ride!

 

[collkid]

I can't just use the roller fairleads that I have now?

 

[xjrev10]

I can't just use the roller fairleads that I have now?

Can get poly rollers for yours.

 

[DutchVDub]

Roller fairleads tend to pinch and shred the sythetic winch lines. So do rocks and trees if you have to drag the line across them. Thats one of the reasons I prefer to stick with good old fashioned steel winch lines.

 

[YELLAHEEP]

My biggest complaint about synthetic is that it gets bound up on the spool very easily because it's so much softer than steel. I've seen synthetic break when trying to un-bind it because of the heat it had generated getting bound up during a pull, so it's real important to keep synthetic wound up tight on the spool and to re-wind it tight after each pull.

I would say that for light duty winching, a roller would be "ok". It's the extreme angle, hard pulls that will get a synthetic line pinched or cut from a roller fairlead.

Synthetic rope does get harder and stronger under load, but overall, it's softer where sharp edges and rough rocks are concerned. A roller fairlead has too many gaps and edges to potentially cause problems - again, to get the synthetic anywhere close to those gaps and edges, it's gotta be a pretty sharp angle.

Also, if the roller fairlead being used for synthetic rope has seen a good amount of use for cable...... the rollers will have some rough surface to them from the cable digging/cutting into the roller metal..... that rough surface could become a cheese grater against the synthetic - especially if the roller binds up with mud or the roller frame gets bent from repeated bashing on the rocks.

This is a disaster waiting to happen.......

 

[xjrev10]

One other thing that has not been mentioned is the safety of using rope. It does not hold energy like steel cable does. So no thimbles or hooks through your windshield or somebody else's.

 

[DutchVDub]

And how many times does that actually happen? I have a lot of experiance using winches and cranes, all with steel cable, and have never experianced a catastrophic failure of the cable. I've broken chains, bents hooks, etc, but I have never had a cable completely fail. Kinks and damage, but never a total failure. IMHO cable is far more durable and reliable. I have far less experiance with the synthetic line and yet have seen total failure at least 5 times.

If I had a competition buggy where weight was important, where the terrain was more predictable, and where I could afford to replace the line on a regular basis I would run it. On my personal rig where I plan on that line potentially lasting me years and I have no idea when/where I'll be using the winch and what kind of rocks, trees, or even body pieces I may have to drag the line over I'll stick with the steel cable.

 

[time2getdirty]

I like my synthetic line. I believe I am almost at 2 years with it. It is still in great condition too. Oh, and I didnt pay over $100 for it!

 

[RockMonkey]

Once you kink a wire rope, it should be replaced. In my experience it is difficult to use a wire rope winch in a real world recovery scenario for very long without kinking it. Synthetic rope does not kink. It does break easily if exposed to abrasion. The really great thing about synthetic line is if it does break, you can splice it back together easily, and the spliced section will be the strongest part of the rope. The fact that it is easily repaired makes synthetic rope last much longer than wire rope. I used the same amsteel blue rope through years of the toughest trails, and UROC competitions.

 

[YELLAHEEP]

Funny how experiences are different between folks when discussing a "which is best" topic.

I've seen cable fail more times than synthetic. And it's scary as hell when cable breaks. The one thing in favor of cable - it seems to take a helluva lot more strain before it breaks than synthetic. Of the synthetic failures I've seen, they weren't pulling all that hard compared to the cable failures I'd seen.

I'd agree that in my experience, cable does tend to be more durable than synthetic, but synthetic is MUCH easier to use, stow, it's lighter and re-useable when broken (at least re-useable enough to get you out) and it's undoubtedly safer for those around it. For those reasons, it's easy to see why cable is cheaper and synthetic is more expensive.

 

[DutchVDub]

You can repair steel cable just as easily, it just gets shorter as you do.

My experiance with cable has been pulling and lifting things up to 100,000lbs. Add in mire factors to recovers and I've recoverd way more than that using snatch blocks to get the mechanical advantage needed to pull a 60,000lbs PLS out of the mud that came up past the bottom of its windows.

As I've said, I don't have a lot of experiance with the synthetic. I've been around it but never owned it myself. The majority of my experiance with winching in general is with a lot bigger and heavier equipment than our Jeeps can even dream of being. There could be a lot of differences because of this. I know though that i would never trust a synthetic winch line to pull a HEMMT, let alone a stuck M1 Abrams. I've worked on and around M88's too and I've seen them need to triple team trying to get an M1 un-stuck. Never broke a cable, just maxed out the winch and didn't move.

I think the biggest difference is that when a steel cable breaks its mainly due to a lack of maint, ex: rust and kinks, where as when a synthetic line breaks its because its not strong enough or gets chewed up during use. No matter what your preferance you always need to make sure the cable/line is rated for a lot more than your winch (at least double but I'd say 4x) and you need to regularly inspect it for damage.