Synthetic winch line

[madizell]

can you please elaborate on this? what makes the mechanical or hydraulic winches different?

What he is trying to say is that mechanical winches, such as a PTO-driven device, or a hydraulic winch generally do not generate and store as much heat in use, and are a bit kinder on the synthetic line as a result.

Of course, there are almost no PTO winches available for our vehicles these days, there are almost no modern transmissions that are adaptable to PTO drive unless you get a 3/4 ton truck with a manual transmission already conformed to PTO drive, and the hydraulic winches sold in this country are mostly toys to start with (IMHO), being supplied hydraulic pressure from the power steering pump. PS pumps don't make sufficient volume to drive an hydraulic winch at a usable power level, and mounting a secondary pump of sufficient volume and pressure can be quite a problem with late model vehicles due to a lack of space in the accessory area, or because many vehicles now use serpentine belt systems that do not lend themselves easily to addition of extra accessories, such as a pump. I have seen hydraulic winches on the trail, but have yet to see one that could keep up with even an entry level electric.

The only hydraulic winches I have seen on off road vehicles that were worth mentioning were on racing vehicles in Australia, where there are one or two real screamers to be found.

If you are concerned about heat and want an electric winch that won't cook synthetic line, the Warn 8274-50 is the only choice out there. It has neither brake nor gear set inside the drum, and it stays quite cool in the hardest use.

 

[hochung]

so a warn 8000 could possibly get hot with an intensive pull, to the point that the synthetic line will be in danger?

 

[robert j. yates]

Its not a pull that you need to be concerned about but rather a controlled output of winchline which uses the brake. For example.... lowering another vehicle down an obstacle. Its using the brake in that situation that will heat up the drum.

 

[crawler#976]

Its not a pull that you need to be concerned about but rather a controlled output of winchline which uses the brake. For example.... lowering another vehicle down an obstacle. Its using the brake in that situation that will heat up the drum.

That's one way to get it warm - the other is extended use. My winch got too hot to touch after an extended session of use even with time to cool while re-rigging from different angles.

 

[robert j. yates]

Yah...but that normally will not bother the rope in my experience. The brake is in the drum and once you start putting that to some serious use, then you need to be concerned about the rope.

I've been running synthetic for close to 7 years now with the 5/16ths first on an M8000 and currently the 3/8ths on my 9.5XP. I wasn't even using a heat guard on my first set-up and it wasn't an issue as I did not put the brake to any serious use.

 

[ntsqd]

Perhaps my M8 (being used & abused before me) is missing parts, but I don't see any mode of heat conductance to the drum beyond that through the drive gear arrangement and the carrier bushings. The only thing inside the drum is the drive shaft from the motor. I'm sort of mystified as to how this brake works and even where it is. I've had the whole winch apart & did not find anything that was an obvious brake. I just tried to find an exploded parts diagram on Warn's site, but had no luck.

Per Winchline.com the 1/4 is rated to 5400, the 5/16" @ 13,500, the 3/8" @ 19,600.

I don't recall the exact number, but the 1/4" I had specs for from the mfg was something on the order of 8100-8500 lbs avg breaking strength. The reason I even mentioned my consideration of it was to show that the rote answer is not always the correct answer.
I believe that for a winch to have infinite torque at stall it would require infinite current availability.
Given the number of times I've needed or even wished for a winch (0) I've shelved the whole project.

 

[hochung]

Its not a pull that you need to be concerned about but rather a controlled output of winchline which uses the brake. For example.... lowering another vehicle down an obstacle. Its using the brake in that situation that will heat up the drum.

exactly. So, how is a hydraulic winch like mile marker free from this issue? from what I know, the MM can't even "winch out" without extra plumbing. and even so, because they use planetary gearing, it'll have a brake in the drum.

the worm gear driven (ramsey RE and superwinch Husky) winches are the ones immune from the heat issue. The M8274 and EP series superwinch also don't suffer from the brake heat issue because their brakes are located outside of the spool drum.

 

[pwc]

I just finished loading up 125' of Combo line on a M8000 with a the HD protector. It was a pain the first time to get the protector in there but it works. 125' of 3/8" is as much as you can fit on a M8000 for reference.

I bought the line after seeing another Winchline line fail. It was one of those cases where people weren't paying the winching enough respect and were a bit close. It made a hell of a snap. The end left on the truck rebounded towards the truck without much force. The end going around a snatch block to another truck whipped out some past the snatch block. After seeing it break, I realized I didn't want steel cable any more.

As for repairs, it's actually a LOT cheaper and easier than steel. Viking makes a repair kit and was nice enough to give a group of us inn Washington a demo on how to repair. I didn't make the trip but those that went said it was good hands on experience. The kit is small (would fit inside a Nalgeen bottle) and worth the money when you need it. Being field repairable is something I think puts synthetic above steel in ease of use.

 

[madizell]

Personally, I find it a lot easier to load the spare winch line than attempting a field splice on synthetic. I can strip and reload 160 feet of line on the 8274 in less than 5 minutes. A good splice will take me most of an hour, assuming I can remember all the ins and outs of splicing 12-strand braided line, and have the tools available to do it. Nor would I ever put a repaired line back in service unless that was the only line I had, and I was still stuck without assistance. That circumstance has never presented itself. I try to stay with a group.

 

[ntsqd]

I would agree that not needing to repair a line is the best option, but what spurred my testing was answering the "what if there is no other option?" question. I was interested in finding something that was NOT permanent repair, only something that was quick and would "getcha back."

What I found that worked, at least in the 1/4" 12 strand that I used, was a simple "S" weave. Laterally piercing the line with something pointed yet blunt (used a dull pencil) and pulling the end of the other piece thru the hole, then repeating 4-5 times with a minimum spacing of ~2"-3" (closest I used, no idea of how critical this is) would pull until somewhere else failed. Never failed in the "splice" (term loosely used there).
I'm pretty sure that any winch line mfg would justifiably cringe at the thought of this, but it did restore function.

Pierce used to offer hyd winches & may still. Searching for their page is currently turning dead links. Those always seemed to me to be more a serious winch than any of the brand names. I know at one time Scott E of Rockstomper used one of their winches, but I seem to recall that his was electric.

 

[crawler#976]

http://www.milemarker.com/winch-9.html

Mile Marker still offers hydraulic winches.

 

[ntsqd]

A friend of mine has a hyd MM. What I've never seen mentioned about them is something we ran into. Their solenoid valve bias' toward the stock system. So if your pressure/flow demand exceeds what the pump can supply the winch is the first to stop.

Now if that happens to be mounted on a manual trans PSD Ford then you nearly can not pull on someone else. Can't hold position with the brakes because the pump doesn't supply enough to run both the winch & the hydraboost. That seems peculiar to me, but I watched it happen. Winch truck was sitting on a dirt/gravel road, so no digging-in and a second anchor vehicle would have blocked the road. We were left with the mass of the truck and the p-brake as the only anchors. Sadly, the stuck vehicle was only a Samurai high-centered on a log and we just barely were able to pull it off.

Based on this, for any serious use of an MM I would recommend a second hyd pump just for it.

 

[michaelgroves]

Now if that happens to be mounted on a manual trans PSD Ford then you nearly can not pull on someone else. Can't hold position with the brakes because the pump doesn't supply enough to run both the winch & the hydraboost.

This is a new one on me! Is this something peculiar to Ford, where the power steering pump is somehow tied into the brakes? Or am I misunderstanding something?



I've had a few MM hydraulics, and been impressed by all of them. They don't have a brake in the drum, and heating is certainly never an issue. (Spool out under load is managed by the valves, AFAIK, same as spool-in, no extra plumbing required!)

They have been fine when I have used them off the standard P.S pump, albeit a little slower. I doubt that any P.S. pump delivers less pressure than the maximum a MM can deal with, so the torque on the winch isn't an issue - it's just the low flow-rate on some P.S pumps, which can make the winch a bit slower. For the same reason, issues with the longevity of the pump are myths - a P.S pump is designed to work for thousands of hours, continuously.

Having said that, a dedicated pump is often worth the effort, IMO - for the extra speed and the fact that you don't mess with the original steering plumbing.

There have been several threads on here comparing electric and hydraulic/mechanical winches, so no point in rehashing them, but I would say that one essential feature of a hydraulic winch is that it should have two speeds. It doesn't matter how slow the slow speed is, as long as there is a reasonably high speed for re-spooling the line when re-rigging or when you are finished winching.

 

[michaelgroves]

The other thing one has to keep in mind is that, anyway, neither rollers nor hawses are inherently suitable for feeding ropes at severe angles. Their small diameter means that the rope itself is weakened as it comes under compression instead of tension. It's just a guess, but I would think that a rope bent at 60 degrees around a fairlead will lose between 25 and 50% of its strength.

I'm not sure I would agree with that. You are not really compromising line strength until you force it into an arc that is tighter than its natural radius (the tightest bend you can make a line take without any tension applied). This is why knots are bad. That said, I suppose I could see that bending it around a hawse fairlead could reduce rope strength (mostly because of sliding force), but no way on rollers.

Any turn around a bollard, a roller, a sheave etc., will compromise a rope's strength, because the force becomes compression instead of tension. But a bigger radius arc will spread the compressive force over a longer length of the rope. There's no precise cut-off point at which it becomes unacceptable - it's a continuously (but disproportionately) reduced breaking strain as you reduce the radius. But most rope manuals recommend 10-20 times the rope diameter as the minimum sheave diameter to keep it from becoming a significant weak point.

I say "sheave" because of course that is assuming the rope does go all the way around, which would put maximum compression on the line. I concede that the 60 degrees I mention would put the rope under far less compression, so my guess was probably significantly too high, especially for thinner gauge ropes.

You can never exceed the pull strength of your winch, with the unlikely exception of shock loading. What that means is if you have an 8,000 lb. winch, you will never exceed 8,000 lb. of force on the line.

Nuh uh! See my earlier post, reproduced below:

Also keep in mind that at stall, an electric winch can generate far greater momentary loads than its rated capacity. Unfortunately, the excess is too random to predict (an electric motor theoretically has infinite torque at the moment of stall). But on some industrial electric winches, the stall pull is as estimated as 2 - 3 times higher than the rated pull!

It is a momentary pull, so it can't help extricate your vehicle, but it can make your rope or other rigging go "ping"!

As far as shock loads go, the time they are most likely to be a problem is when driving and winching at the same time, which is probably the most common cause of broken rigging, when the rope goes slack, the vehicle then rolls back over a rock or something, and is brought up hard by the rope.

 

[ntsqd]

This is a new one on me! Is this something peculiar to Ford, where the power steering pump is somehow tied into the brakes? Or am I misunderstanding something?

Any vehicle with Hydraboost is likely to have the same issue. GM & Ford US diesel pick-up trucks come with this system. I think that Dodge's still use a vacuum pump, but no direct info on that.
Aftermarket vendor: http://www.hydratechbraking.com/
H-B, as it is sometimes referred to, is a good option for trucks with modified brakes. Makes for a much less demanding system design, i.e. it covers up most subtle system inadequecies, but it places more stress on the PS pump.

As has been said, a dedicated pump is the best idea, even if not easily integrated.

A stalled electric motor also gets really hot, really fast. Only way for that to happen that I can think of is very high current. Since there is a practical upper current limit there must also be a practical upper torque limit. I'm sure that still exceeds the winch's rating, but by how much would be hard to quantify w/o testing.