Thread: 110 recovery points

Agreed and agreed Brendan.

playing in sand with minimally stuck lightly laden vehicles reach for the snatch... Otherwise slow and steady does me fine.

Interestingly when the winch extension strap broke, both it and the new plasma rope on the 130 winch fell to the ground with no recoil at all. I also appreciated being able to strip the rope of the drum when at home and wash the mud and salt out of it after a week pulling boats/trailers and stuck vehicles of the beach and out of the mud. Was so easy to put in a bucket and wash off the crap that would rust a steel rope.

S

Interesting about the plasma line and winch extension strap just falling to the ground without recoil.

I personally think this 'falling to ground' comment is marketing hype and would suggest it is in general treated as such.

The failures I have seen the lines have recoiled in some cases so the broken end lands at the other end of the vehicle.

So why does synthetic lines sometimes fall to the ground and sometimes recoil?

I would hypothesis that it is a complicated mixture of line manufacturer, state of line (how badly abraded it is etc) actual load and the speed of loading as well.

Whilst a failed synthetic line is probably 'safer' then a failed steel line I would suggest that the same safety rules are applied when winching with a synthetic line as steel lines. Main one being that all non essential people are removed from the 'exclusion zone' defined as two circles radius of winch line centred on the two vehicles/vehicle and ground anchor. OK the winch bitch is in the firing line but that is part of their job!

Agree with comments re cleaning the synthetic line..

Whilst it is possible to knot a failed synthetic line with reasonable success until knot reaches the fairing. It is possible to attach a synthetic line to winch drum using a timber hitch and a few wraps over. The winch extension line I use is identical to main line so will pass through a snatch block unlike an extension strap.

Double lining whilst halving the load on the line and motor, halves the line speed is in my mind safer then single lining for recovery purposes. Much less chance of line failure, but double lining does not alter the load on the anchor point

Regards


Brendan