Winch advice

[chapel gate]

I like slow, less chance of things going wrong. Ive used mine for pretty much everything but self recovery! Dragging fallen trees out of rivers and up hill sides, shifting pallets of brick around on site, relocating sheds..
mine has turned to dust though, so i would keep an eye on how that finish holds up on some of the cheaper ones.
i also wouldnt be without my remote.

 

[Gary820]

I've got a goodwinch 9.5 tds, the 80 is the 3rd vehicle I've had it fitted to. It's had a fair bit of usage (Not so much in the last year or so) and it's a great winch. Must of had nearly 10years now, Emma got me it as an engagement present

Runs the bow motor 2 (more power) and pulls really well, 11mm rope. The coating was rubbish but I painted it after a few years.

 

[moggy1968]

This might be of interest, winch clearance, various makes
https://m.facebook.com/groups/62605...product&notif_id=1523613377390096&ref=m_notif

 

[Bmonck]

Wow this was a timely thread.
I have a talon superwinch 12.5. Came with the truck. Good insurance to have I think. Only really used it to pull out other people. Had it 3 years no issues.

It has wire not rope and Last month I noticed it had developed a loop. It had probably strayed from not being tightly wound back in last time I used it and the loop had worked it’s way all the way back to where it starts on the drum. So had to unwind the whole thing by hand feeding the loop through the system at each rotation. Then tied to a tree and wound it up under some light strain. Took an hour but better than finding out When I really needed it.

I had never given a thought to regular maintenance. So Great advice on running it free spool once a month and occasional strip down. Will do that now.

Here is the tidy result.

 

[Bmonck]

By the way I also have a cover over the whole thing that keeps whole system pretty clean most of the time which I think really helps reliability.

 

[clivehorridge]

I can only repeat what’s been said.

I’ve got a 9.5 Superwinch bought new about 12 years ago. I swapped the wire for dyneema before ever using it, and I’ve used it a lot for deep mud self-recovery, as well as the occasional tree-trunk drag and so forth.

Slug-slow, but that’s safest, it’s never let me down. I pulled it apart once and greased it, but that’s all.

As an older model, it had 2 chrome steel bars joining the two halves together either side of the drum. They rusted terribly, so I had 2 stainless steel bars turned up and threaded identical to the originals, and with a coat of paint the winch looks reasonable considering it’s age.

I free-spool it from time to time and every year I run out the rope to check and wash it. Just bundle it in a bucket of luke-warm water with a bit of clothes-wash powder, and give it a good bit of agitation in the water. You’ll see what comes out of it if you’ve used it in mud, about 1/2 kilo of sand is left in my bucket when I wash it.

Give it a good rinse, stretch it out to dry and then I haul the truck up the garden slope from a tree, puts just the right tension on the rope to pack it nicely on the drum.

Reel it in with a random side to side motion, don’t wind it in like a perfect spiral to make it look like a brand new drum of cable. The random criss-crossing stops the rope from cutting through the bundle right down the the drum on heavy pulls, ‘cos when that happens, you can spend 1/2 a day trying to free the rope-jam.

I’m not sure how long it will go for, I managed to run it down to a stall when I was pulling Chas out of a river here, so it’s not as powerful as it used to be. I should have had the snatch-block rigged back to a recovery point, 1/2 speed but double the pulling power, but as always, you tend to just hook up and pull, not realizing that an overland 80 bogged into 1/2m of silt and full of water is probably going to need a 20 tonne pull to shift it

Anyway, it pulled him out, eventually.

 

[Chris]

I've seen the criss-cross method before but always thought that it was flawed. It's a bit like Butch and Sundance "No one is going to rob us going UP the mountain" Unless it's a very short pull, you will spool out most of the rope when you are winching so laying it on crossed is a bit pointless. What I do on a long pull, is pull in a few turns, then stop, pull the rope back off the drum and lay it back on as you described Clive. It's rare in a pull that you can get the rope to go where you want it when under tension. The added benefit is that it allows the alternator to put some charge back into the battery whilst you are off load. Unless it's a life and death situation, take time to winch safely and efficiently. I have seen so many people just press 'winch in' with no thought as to where the power is coming from; mistakenly thinking it's from the alternator. A few minutes later they try to start their engines and again and surprise surprise the battery is dead.

 

[moggy1968]

I've seen the criss-cross method before but always thought that it was flawed. It's a bit like Butch and Sundance "No one is going to rob us going UP the mountain" Unless it's a very short pull, you will spool out most of the rope when you are winching so laying it on crossed is a bit pointless. What I do on a long pull, is pull in a few turns, then stop, pull the rope back off the drum and lay it back on as you described Clive. It's rare in a pull that you can get the rope to go where you want it when under tension. The added benefit is that it allows the alternator to put some charge back into the battery whilst you are off load. Unless it's a life and death situation, take time to winch safely and efficiently. I have seen so many people just press 'winch in' with no thought as to where the power is coming from; mistakenly thinking it's from the alternator. A few minutes later they try to start their engines and again and surprise surprise the battery is dead.

The joys of a hand throttle

 

[clivehorridge]

Can’t disagree with Chris, so can we conclude that advice of winding cross-cross makes Chris cross?

It’s probably only valid on rarer occasions, but I used to keep my drum very neat and tidy, carefully rewound after use in a very orderly spiral fashion. Just my luck I had a short winch pull, and the line jammed to drum. I had line tied to branches and a breaker bar trying to back-wind against the bull-bar to force it out, it was wet, muddy, couldn’t grip anything and all the usual stuff. That’s the only reason I suggested the random bundle wind.