Thread: Warning about Wire Rope Replacement with Synthetic

That is very surprising.

I have been thinking about buying a winch that comes with synthetic rope with the option of going steel if I wanted to in the future. I wonder if there is any problem in reverse.

Never heard that one - it's usually to do with the internal brake. Maybe just steer clear of a Superwinch by the sounds of it. By their own admission, they don't sound so super...

I've done a fair bit of reading into this and there appears to be two issues. As Superwinch states, one is the strength of the drum. The additional pressure on the drum is created by the fact that although synthetic rope does not stretch, it is able to compress and can force its way down through the rope layers when pulling. If the winch is not payed out fully and the rope then rewound after each winch, this pressure builds up with each successive pull and eventually gets too much for he drum. In saying that, I don't know how common this type of failure is with synthetic upgrades. There are several videos out the showing how to correctly lay synthetic rope onto a drum to prevent layers binding up ([ame]http://youtu.be/mLsSqQ44qeI[/ame])

The second issue is heat buildup from the brake. Good quality synthetic rope winches have the brake on the motor or gearbox but for reputable manufacturers/models that have the brake in the drum, a heat protecting sleeve is placed over the first few meters or so of rope that form the first layers on the drum, preventing heat degradation of the synthetic fibres.

Apart from the additional cost of the synthetic rope itself (which is coming down all the time), these are probably the reasons why a good quality synthetic rope winch costs a few hundred dollars more than its wire rope equivalent model.

I'm sure there are many people out that have upgraded from wire rope to synthetic without a problem however they should be aware of these points.

Happy, safe winching .