Thread: Self feeding winch rope for rear mount winch

Not sure about recovery winches, but the lifting winches(hoists) that are on the crane/borer (power pole) trucks that i sometimes work on have the fairlead mounted a distance from the winch drum, 3-4 foot maybe. They don't seem to have an issue, but 5/8-3/4 inch steel cable and always have some tension on them from a heavy hook block.

Wire winch cables tend to "Spring" out when the tension is released and getting the wire back on the drum in an orderly manner is pretty difficult unless the tension is maintained ALL the time.
A synthetic rope would be more user friendly and it doesn't "Spring" out when the tension is taken off the rope.

the greater the distance the better the chances I’m thinking.

Then II gets problem with tony mounted winches is you rarely have a straight pull and the fairlead is mounted very close to the drum therefore no chance of the rope laying itself across the drum.

A member that was in here had a centre mount PTO winch that was set up to winch forwards and backwards, he recovered six off us one day uona bloody big hill and didn’t experience and binding of the rope.....from memory he could look through the cab floor and watch the rope on the drum. This was a seriously fast winch. I reckon his first rollers would have been at least 900mm from the drum, probably more.

Pulling on a very daggy old riggers hat, I remember that what you need to calculate is the fleet angle, and assuming your winch drum is smooth, IE ungrooved, then the fleet angle will be 1:19. To expand on that, take 1/2 the distance between the winch drum flanges, and multiply it by 19. The result is the distance from the drum face to the guide point for the wire rope.

There's lots of further information in The Riggers Guide, the link to which, I've copied below.
Look from page 25 onward, and specifically pages 29 and 30

http://www.riggingtraining.com.au/Rigging/rigging_guide_part_1.pdf

Don.

Originally Posted by Don 130

To expand on that, take 1/2 the distance between the winch drum flanges, and multiply it by 19.
Don.

Wow, my winch is 220mm flange to flange. that equates to near on 2m between drum and fairlead. if i mount the winch at the cabin i would be near on 1.9m.

Anyone have thoughts on how dynema rope will respond under those conditions? Will it feed like steel cable?

I think you'll find most under body winches are horizontal winding with a large diameter, but quite narrow drum, which allows for the fairlead to be much closer than your setup will allow.
You may have to just set it the same as a front mount, with the fairlead close up, then re-lay the wire properly after you've bunched it up on a job.
As for plasma rope, my experience was during a time before that stuff was available. I must say it's mesmerising watching the wire self laying on a big drum at high speed.
My guess is that plasma rope fleet angle will be very close to that of wire. If you have a winch already fitted to the front (wound with plasma), and a snatch block, it would be easy to set up a trial to find out the optimum angle for plasma
Don.

I’m wearing a current riggers hat and fleet angle plus back tension is crucial if you are looking for self level wind. And yes we work on 20:1 as minimum required distance. I’ve got some 110mm diameter kimplasma with MBL of 550 Tons below now that would be some tow ropemind fit up on winch might be problematic 🤣

Rear winch mounted up behind the cab would be a great setup, some rollers to feed it down along the outside of the chassis rail with a fairlead at the front of one rail like the army Inters would be getting close to ideal.