xxdabroxx
TJ Addict
I’m plenty good at getting myself into trouble even without the false sense of security 4 wheel drive and a winch brings thank you very much. Lol
Synthetic rope failure: Does it drop or recoil?
- Thread starter jjvw
- Start date
The whole goddamn industry is built around a false sense of security. Look at how many tout, promote, and use winching weights draped over the cable and then tell others to do the same. Oh, just grab that floormat and sweatshirt and toss it on the cable, we're all safe now. There is a major player telling everyone that more connections is better and builds hokey ass products to get everyone to buy into that bullshit. Every rigger out there knows that the least number of connections possible is ideal. But no, more connections is more better.
And I'm not picking on you. I'm just continually astounded at the amount of total bullshit that is out there and the lack of real knowledge and understanding of what it takes to not maim or kill yourself or someone else.
Sadly, the bullshit gets repeated enough that it becomes accepted as fact and then that becomes built into the knowledge base as something that is important. Take chafe guards slid onto synthetic line. They are not chafe guards, they hide damage and yet, my friends in the industry can't sell a winchline without one because no one believes just how bad they really are.
Biggest myth out there about synthetic winch ropes. They stretch under load, that stored energy is released when the line parts and it moves at about the same speed as parted steel cable under the same load.
Let's just go ahead and say...
GO FUCK YOURSELF, FACTOR 55!
...and move on with our evening (because, for seriously, that company needs to start fucking itself instead of fucking everyone else).
All synthetic, natural fiber and steel cordage stores energy when under load. When that energy is catastrophically released it will snap back. After spending 30 years at sea, the majority of them in the towing industry, I’ve a very, very healthy respect for what can happen when there’s a failure. Doesn’t matter if it’s a Warn on the front of a Jeep or a Skagit on a tug, the physics is the same.
I’m plenty good at getting myself into trouble even without the false sense of security 4 wheel drive and a winch brings thank you very much. Lol
I never took your comments as if you were picking on me as I agree with damned near everything you have said. The only way to counter the bullshit is to provide real life experience and examples. These outfits are all trying to make a buck and part of that strategy is selling bullshit to push their product.
Never took your comments as if you were picking on me. Look at how much accurate info. and experience has been generated from this initial thread to counter the myths and bullshit that are used to sell or push a product. Nah, my skin is too thick and I've been in the shit too much to think you are picking on me. Hopefully, some of this info. will make more people aware of the dangers involved in order to develop a healthy respect for the dynamic forces involved that cannot be seen until something catastrophic occurs.
I don't believe that any amount of accurate info and experience can fix it. I've been pushing for education and truth even about something as simple as a chafe or abrasion guard for roughly the last 20 years or since I started using synthetics and became aware of their properties. I started with winchline.com and the owners by warning them (they were friends so I had good access) about a few things. Abrasion guards are dangerous, don't supply or use them and start educating folks as to why. Their response? They had custom versions made with their name on them.
Worse or nearly as bad, we have what are supposed to be highly respected 4x4 trainers and teachers who can NOT understand or fathom that you need to keep the rules for the different industries in context. It is ignorant to request a WLL on a product that is going to be used with another product that does not have a WLL or a similar safety standard. And yet, they do it over and over.
The only thing you can do is put the info. out there. If people choose to ignore it, that is on them.
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I fully get that it is on them. I also fully get that even though it is on them, it is also very dangerous, and the goal of those who understand should be to keep folks safer while they are doing something inherently dangerous.
Maybe I can clarify a bit more for others with an example of the typical 9500 lb rated winch.
They are typically supplied with a 5/16" steel cable/wire rope with a rated breaking strength of 9800 lbs..
The overhead lifting industry uses a 5-1 safety factor for the vast majority of the rigging and rigging components. In other words, if you want to use a shackle to lift a 4 ton load, a quality 3/4" bow shackle can be used and it has a Working Load Limit of 4 3/4 tons which is 1/5 of its rated breaking strength of 47,500 lbs.
The offroad recovery world comes along and sees the 9500 lb. rating and adopts it as the standard and then tells everyone that they should also be using it because the overhead rigging world is correct, so it has to be correct for winch recoveries. The glaring mistake in that logic is the winch does not have the same WLL or 5-1 safety factor. In fact, it doesn't have much more than a 1-1 safety factor on average if you believe that every piece of cable will break at the rated 9800 lbs or every 9500 lbs rated winch will pull at no more than that. In a perfect world, that is a 300 lb safety buffer.
The reality is, the average 9500 lb winch can't break a quality 7/16" bow shackle and by comparison, that shackle is miniscule when you compare it to the 3/4" bow shackle.
This pic shows the two sort of side by side for a comparison.
I have a few I keep around to show folks and not a single time has anyone said or understood they can't break it and emphatically insisted I was not correct.
Think anyone learned anything from this? I am kind of surprised that 4 X 4 winches don't have a built in load limiter or clutch that will slip before one reaches the danger zone.
I hope so, if I didn't have that hope, I'd just keep my mouth shut, resign myself to ignorance, go sit in the backyard and watch the wildlife.
Fortunately, the reason that as few get hurt or have accidents as do is the fact that very few ever use their winch and when they do, it is rarely below the top two layers of line on the drum. They are being used at far below the rated capacity. The capacity is only at the first layer of line on the drum. The instant that the second layer starts, the capacity drops by an average of 20% and the same for each successive layer. Typically the top layer is a little below whatever half the rated capacity is. If you factor in that most pulls are in that range generally, it makes even less sense to use a shackle rated at near 50,000 lbs. breaking strength. It all stems from a lack of real understanding.
Not quite all of them; every once in awhile, you'll find one that's drilled for 19 or 18mm, or even 5/8". Doesn't really make much of a difference, for obvious reasons...but it'll trip you up if you're not ready for it. I first saw it on a few Rampage bumpers several years ago - unsurprising, given the provenance - and every now and again I see a shackle mount that's demonstrably smaller than the stupidly-standard 3/4". Rare, but it happens.
OP
Thanks to everyone who is participating and taking the time to analyze and explain. This is what I hoped would happen.
Some more follow up. This morning I removed the 12 foot section that remained on the drum. The left over ~80 feet was re-spooled.
This is the edge where the line parted. I honestly wouldn't believe it if it wouldn't have happened. But you can see the rough sand cast steel surface below the powder coat. This will be replaced when the aluminum TRE hawse arrives.
Some more follow up. This morning I removed the 12 foot section that remained on the drum. The left over ~80 feet was re-spooled.
This is the edge where the line parted. I honestly wouldn't believe it if it wouldn't have happened. But you can see the rough sand cast steel surface below the powder coat. This will be replaced when the aluminum TRE hawse arrives.
Not correctly sized in the least. It is a rule of rigging, offroad and otherwise that one should not restrain a shackle so it can't follow the line of pull. Correctly, the eyes in shackle tabs on bumpers would be shaped like the eye on the Safety Thimble so you can put the body of the bow shackle in the tab and then two spacers if needed on either side of the attachment to the pin to keep it in the center of the pin.
OP
That means the 80ish feet of line is likely closer to correct. If you overfill the drum with wraps, it stacks up too high on a side pull which does two things, blows up the tie rods and destroys the winch housing and damages the rope by abrading it on the deck under very high force. Every time we mount a new Warn with their line on it, we have to cut off about 15-20 feet because it is within fractions of an inch of the winch deck when perfectly spooled.