Going on a desert run next weekend and doing some general maintenance on the TJ. Having a winch with synthetic rope is new to me.
I pulled the rope completely out inspected it for frays and dirt and then rewound it back on keeping tension and making sue the alignment was tight. My question is about the sheath that covers about 10’ at the hook end. I asked the Google about it and got conflicting answers. Some say it goes on the spool end and acts as a heat shield to protect the rope from the internal brake produced heat. Others say it goes on the hook end and is for abrasion protection? Which is it?
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That type of guard is fairly useless. As stated, it is only there because folks don't understand what they do and don't do and then assign enough value to them that it sways their decision to purchase a line that has one over a line that doesn't if both are the same price.
Under load winching in, they regularly bunch up by dragging against the fairlead opening and get jammed on the line which only gets worse as it happens more. If you care to see if it is something you'd like to keep, the test is simple, get a short piece of it, stick it over your finger and see if you trust it to keep your finger safe from a sharp knife. That may seem a bit unfair but if you move that sleeve over to where your line is resting on a sharp rock and hit the spool in button, the 1000's of pounds of force against the rock are doing the same thing and the line will get damaged.
As a heat shield, they aren't that great either. The first problem is how much heat a winch produces that has to overcome the cone brake to spool in which isn't really that much. The line on the drum gets squished because folks don't spool it up the first time under enough tension to stack the layer in tight. When it gets flattened, it often takes on a very shiny appearance that folks confuse with the line being melted, it isn't, it is just flat and shiny.
Not sure what you have for a hook or fairlead but I can see the SS thimble sucked into the fairlead opening. If you have an aluminum fairlead, the opening should only ever have just the line in it. Hooks, thimbles, etc. when stored like that, can damage the smooth surface, causes nicks and burrs and those will damage the line being spooled in under load. You also need to make sure the opening in the fairlead mount is larger by at least 1/4" all the way around the opening in the fairlead. Contact with any of those mount edges will fully destroy the line under load.
