expeditionswest said:
I have never understood the fixation with really long rope lengths on the winches. With a pully block and proper extension the 80-90' length is most ideal. A winch only generates its greatest capacity at the first layer of cable on the drum. Long winch lines make it difficult to attain full pulling power. That, and the line will nearly always pull to one side and require a respool anyways.
There is no single answer and no "ideal" in my opinion. Certainly most winch recoveries are short pulls, and if we are not traveling alone in remote country, there is usually someone at hand to provide an anchor point. However, using a snatch block can reduce available line by half, and if you have to use an extension to make the connection, you will have a shackle in the line that you will need to work around, since it won't spool past the snatch block. It also places a steel projectile in the middle of your recovery line, which you need to keep in mind, and deal with.
A lot of the discussion about line length has to be dictated by the winch you use. Many, like the M8000, won't take more than about 80 feet of line anyway, and they don't like having the line packed on one end, as will happen in a long recovery. If you use a hi-mount as I do (8274-50), it will hold 160 feet of 3/8 synthetic line easily, and I have made full length recoveries without resetting the line because the drum has an amazing ability to self-regulate and will handle a great deal of line packed to one side and still function. The longest recovery I have made was approximately a quarter mile up a 35 degree slope (t-case destroyed, tailshaft sheared, leaving us with only front wheel drive). Obviously we reset the line many times to pull that far, but we ran full length pulls each time without respooling or repacking. 80 feet of line would not have gotten us to some of the anchor points, and using an extension that needed to be put in line and taken out repeatedly would have used up a lot of recovery time. So, it just depends on your equipment and the situations you find yourself in whether you need or can use longer lines.
Not mentioned in the string here is the heat generated by lay down winches, and the effect that can have on synthetic line. Most of the high modulus poly ropes begin to break down at only 140 degrees, and beyond that temperature, the rope can quickly lose half of its rated strength. For lay down applications, particularly in ARB-style bumpers where the winch is enclosed and heat can build up, synthetic line is not a good idea unless you never do sustained pulling and never, ever, do reverse winching (power out to back down a slope) as reverse operation generates more than the usual heat due to stress on the internal brake. If you operate in desert heat, 140 degrees is easy to achieve with only light usage of the winch.
If you must use synthetic line in an enclosed laydown winch in hot country, use a kevlar based rope, such as X-line, which will take temperatures over 400 degrees without deformation. Actually, you can't really melt X-line with a torch the way you can high modulus poly rope such as Plasma rope. Warn offers a two-tone rope that is actually a combination of heat resistant rope for the first wrap and a poly outer length for the balance of the rope. I don't use the X-line only because of its handling characteristics, and not because it is inferior in strength or anything like that. X-line tends to jam a lot, and it makes spooling out after use a real **********.
The other comment, about greatest pull on first wrap, is true, but not really an issue most of the time. I have yet to stall my winch on the trail, so I rarely find myself demanding all the winch will produce in order to get unstuck (you have to be seriously, deeply, and gloriously stuck to offer 8,000 pounds of resistance, even with an 8,000 pound vehicle). Since it usually takes only one or two thousand pounds of pull to get moving from your standard trail stuck, it does not matter that I might be using wrap number 5 instead of number one. The winch pulls well enough even with the drum stuffed, as a rule.
Bottom line is that I have come up short on line, even with 150+ on hand, but have never been unable to recover simply because I had a lot of line on the drum.
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