Oh I remember all that hoopla well. It was all over the internet and since I was highly involved with Masterpull, Winchline.com, and Viking at the time we were all standing around scratching our heads going WTF?? Remember the other reason they gave? They told lots of folks that the steel cable acted as a heat sink and pulled heat out of the drum. Synthetic use would burn up the winch. I just had one question. What if you did a few back to back pulls where you were far from the rigs you were pulling over a short obstacle and then pulled the line back out to minimum wraps on the drum? Is that gonna burn up the winch? We all know the answer is no but Warn would not back down.Warns history with synthetic line I would call at best comical. They started with flat out saying it should not be used on their winches when it first became popular because the brake could melt the rope. So to solve the heat problem they offered the most complicated and expensive line when they spliced a "crystal polymer" line to Amsteel. I can remember the ridicule on pirate they got over that.
Now they are just as silly because the warning on the line is that it is not a serviceable item. If you damage the line a few feet from the end termination you have to replace the whole line. The rest of the hypocrisy there is they own a product that has to be spliced.
I still have a few lines from Viking with that crystal polymer bullshit spliced onto the first 10 feet.
Because if you are in the habit of doing so, you need a hoist and a winch makes a very poor hoist.The funny thing is the answer to the heat problem was to not winch out under load for extended periods of time.
I'm very sad about that.Unfortunately now that they are owned by Keystone there are a lot of choices being made that IMO are more about profits than reputation. They still build a solid winch it is just the accessories that are being outsourced and just not as good as they used to be.