Hey guys
Thinking about picking up a winch in the near furture. Was wondering what everyones opinion is on winch cable or synthic rope? Will cost about$150 more to go to rope. My consern is durability. Opinions?
Gator Jaw all the way. I took the hook off my winch before the trip and made a loop in the end of my rope, protected it with a piece of the rock sheath and used the Gator Jaw exclusively.
Only because of the temperatures we were in at night (-10 to -20) did I find them combersome after hooking/unhooking 100+ times, for any normal wheeling trip where you only use your winch a handful of times they're perfect IMO. When we split from the group we actually took Frank's hook, for that trip only I will run a hook with safety latch.
Great vid. Yes, in the water skiing world they are called a tweek. We've had as many as 20 skiers behind a boat all attached to one tweek and it comes apart with no problem. And yes, it's called a FID.
Interesting that you chose to remove your hook. I've always been a hook fan for ease of use and ability to hook up quickly. Now and then a person can be in a precarious position and need to get secured quickly.
@whiterhino did you see the 24 man barefoot line video that was floating around facebook the other day? Can't remember which club did it, but I all I can say is "dibs on outside man, show side :d:" Nothing's worse than a handle to the foot.
I too went with rope on my winch due to safety. After reading up on proper winch techniques and cable care, I'm even more grateful that I made the decision I did.
X2 here...didn't realize we had many experienced show skiers on here. Nothing like a triple rig pulling a barefoot line or 5 prefabs off the dock!
Koz,
I too removed my hook YEARS ago. It simply wasn't worth the risk of someone getting hurt by a flying chunk of steel or aluminum. Some of the new aluminum loops they are selling just make me cringe. There are also some hooks out there that need to be removed FAST before they kill someone.
I use tubular nylon to line the Double lock Brummel Splice.
As to the Gator Jaws, I am making my own but with a slightly stronger knot and different configuration. Button knot instead of the more common Diamond knot. I tried to get Krissplicing to make these modified Gator Jaws but he could not get permission form the L_36 folks to produce them commercially. Therefore I'm just making them myself.
This link is in the animated knots of your link, you just have to dig for it a bit.
As you'll read, this knot is stronger because of the ends being buried IN the rope therefore increasing the diameter of the end the rope is looped over.
It's also a much tidier knot end not have the ends terminate outside the knot.
For those that want one, I point them to the Gator Jaw unless their up to tying rope themselves.
Jim-kb8ymf
I guess I'm struggling a bit to understand why a hook on the end of a rope is dangerous when attached to a quality tree saver. Since the winch line does not stretch and therefore does not have any (or very little) kinetic energy, why is a hook dangerous?
NOTE; this is not a "my way is better" discussion but rather just that..... a discussion..........
I thought rope stretched, but has so little weight to it that when it does break it does not whip around like cable. so if a hook broke, it would whip it back toward the winch vehicle
I agree on the hook discussion I think it's personal pref, I too prefer to get rid of metal on my lines is why I went soft shackle.
When my rope broke it did recoil some but not with any significant energy. Lesson learned on that was even with rope get the FAWK outta the way to be safe.
I honestly have never looked at the WLL of my hook as it came with the Master Pull rope. Assumptions can be dangerous but I considered MP to be a quality supplier who would rate their products properly.
RE flipping, after all the use my line has seen, it's still in very good condition. Since I have 125 ft of line on my 8274, it's been a very long time since I have seen the bottom wraps but I would imagine you have a good idea. The ONE down side I can envision is that I have seen some winches get VERY hot and almost melt the rope on the drum. Although I don't have any technical knowledge of it, I question if the high heat may degrade the rope.
RE flipping, after all the use my line has seen, it's still in very good condition. Since I have 125 ft of line on my 8274, it's been a very long time since I have seen the bottom wraps but I would imagine you have a good idea. The ONE down side I can envision is that I have seen some winches get VERY hot and almost melt the rope on the drum. Although I don't have any technical knowledge of it, I question if the high heat may degrade the rope.
Jim, you are correct it is a fact that heat breaks down the rope you check all the name brand sites and they have that info. Master pull includes a sheath for the first wrap to protect theirs from heat.
Like any good engineering decision...............show me the data!
I have yet to see any actual data showing the heat on the drum, i.e. temp tape or thermocouples, etc AND for what manufacturer of what winch model. i.e., M8000, XD9000, Ramsey, etc. Additionally HOW the winch was required to be operated to attain those numbers. And you do know that your winch is NOT a 100% duty cycle electric motor, more like 20%. So running the winch non-stop probably isn't possible or even practical. So I ask then, how hot can an internal drum really get if you're winching in. Spooling out under load is possibly a different story but again how much of that do we do on a regular basis? I'll bet the outside wrap next to the radiator will get way hotter than the inner wrap as an overall.
Either case, I suspect the inside is much less degraded than the protected inner wraps.
Show me the DATA! For instance, 8274 has the brake on the outside. so where's the heat coming from on the inside of the drum. What winches have the brake on the inside drum? Those that do, 'may' be suspectible to some heat, but how much?
Here's Samsons study on hi-temperature effects on winch rope. Read and digest. They only took it to 212F* ish. You can see it does loose strength as temp rises. But remember too, these test emulate a mooring of a ship in high ambient temperature conditions. The last bullet point in the article shows a rope on a hot plate. Probably a bit closer to our situation with the hot drum. Note the closing comment 'Since not all the fibers are heated to the temperature of the hot surface, it is expected that most of the strength of the rope is maintained'
I don't like flipping the rope, you'll be relying on that 1/2 worn out section some time. I only have 80' on my 8274, it's easy to use the whole thing.
Jim, you are correct it is a fact that heat breaks down the rope you check all the name brand sites and they have that info. Master pull includes a sheath for the first wrap to protect theirs from heat.
That's kind of what I figured. If you were to use it with the soft shakles you would eliminate that concern but I would be cincerned with it coming loose during slack times.
I just upgraded to cable from rope.
The cable came on a 8274 so thats the upgrade. Waiting for some sexy orange rope to go on sale to put on the new winch.
Jim, how much line do these hold? I will be getting 3/8 rope
it was nice seeing plenty of inch rope during the comp. watching that rope break a couple times (on the blue trail) and nobody getting hurt was a nice thing.
Yeah but I was wincing when luke was helping Max winch up the last hill and had to keep rewrapping that shirt that was being used as a winch weight for his cable. He was right next to the cable for too long.
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