Synthetic Rope vs Steel Cable
- Thread starter BillW
- Start date
Your question is obviously not steel vs synthetic but rather safe usage of synthetic. I think you should follow all of the safe methods for recovery regardless of the line type. Just because the synthetic doesn't release the same energy doesn't mean you should do anything careless. Keep people away and always be aware of the direction things are going to go when they break. My guess is most folks wouldn't want any recovery gear thrown at their nuts regardless of what it's made of. The last thing we need is a bunch of idiots filming youtube videos straddling the line shouting, "it's all good, it's synthetic."
Quite the opposite. That is the punchline to an old physics joke.
i didn't mean to challenge physics...........just came out all wrong.
Blaine fixed it in the next post, with engagement time.
That weight of that flappy thing isn't supposed to fall faster. As the line breaks it is "supposed" to go all swerve like and catch onto the flag. The flag then uses air and it's weight to "catch" the line and burn off the energy. That's the theory. It burns energy as it accelerates and flaps around. I guess when you use a backhoe to rip the steel it doesn't grab the flag so it doesn't really do much.
For Sale: 125’ 5/16” Warn Steel Cable. Guaranteed to blow your nuts off if you’re an idiot.
this seems like the best case, the bunched wire snags the bag and it becomes a momentum draining drag anchor.....but is dependent on that crystal ball mentioned earlier...... to close to the break and it scoots right through b4 enough coil is able to snag the bag.
Synthetic and wire rope don't recoil exactly the same. Wire rope is wound and straightens out when stretched under load. When it breaks it acts like a spring that is snapping back to it's natural shape from its breaking point. You can see it winding back in the first video. Synthetic is braided so it can't "unwind". The rope expands along its entire length at the same time like a very long chinese finger trap. It won't just fall to the ground but the reaction force is significantly lower.
OP
As far as the fairlead question, what about the roller fairlead? Back in the day when I had my 74 CJ5, roller fairleads were about all you saw. Now it seems the Hawse is most common.....
The first video is fairly anomalous. Regardless of how they recoil, the speed of the line after the break is relatively the same. The force still works out to be the same mass x velocity equation. The only reason for the lower force is less weight per foot for the same diameters of line.
You can thank the internet for that one. When synthetic rope first came on the scene some failures occurred with worn out rollers at extreme off angles so all rollers were condemned and the thus the rise of the hawse. The web mob was so bad that it convinced winch manufactures to stop including rollers in their winches if they came with synthetic regardless of the data that rollers were just fine.
Several of the ones I saw were off angle and way up. Oddly, they were reported by folks with steel cable that said it caused the line to part under a high load.
Best quote: "it might not kill you, but it will de-nut you"
still come in the Warn M8 box, very similar the the 1 posted above. had it up for sale on FB nobody wanted it. cable too.
i thought i read some older roller leads weren't overlapped enough and the synthetic line could get off an end and chaffed.
is a 5-7# set of bulky rollers desirable vs a .5-1.5# of sleek aluminum.
Last edited:
Agreed, I have a roller + steel cable off my m8 (non-S) that I've received no interest in so far. I could only imagine that warn knows this and charges that premium for the "synthetic version" for that reason.
From an efficiency standpoint the roller is superior to the hawse. That being said I run a hawse because the roller sticks out too far on my winch mount.
Also, if a roller seizes up, you then have a hawse.
Yes, but even then it is superior to a normal hawse because the roller radii are larger.