Offroad-Express

I have worked with Logging winches, Draglines and Slacklines back in the 60's and 70's. In those days the wire ropes were probably not as good as they are these days. I have seen quite a few snap.

In reality a damper may only do any good one in 10 breaks as the breaks i have seen have never had the same result twice. Some recoil slightly, some a lot, some the rope just drops.

I think it more likely that the skinny little wire ropes that the 4WD industry uses may recoil more so, I think the centre of wire ropes now days are all steel, whereas the centres of most of our old ropes were a type of hemp and I think that helped dampen things a bit anyway.

Some of our ropes being long time in the river used to rust badly over time and constant use they used to get very worn and jaggy around joins/splices and shackels and clamped ends where rope meets bucket, most times these were the weakest spots.

Club says use a damper so I do, but imho I doubt it is going to help much if things turn to custurd.

its intersesting to note in winch challenges most of the competitors have the winch blanket attached to the end of the rope near the hook so it doesnt have to be moved as the 4wd winches closer to the anchor point. assuming a 20m winch up a hill, and the damper is at the anchor point then there is potentionally 20m of un-dampened rope that can recoil. as a side note, at taupo last year with Ray we broke a synthetic rope, it cracked loudly and recoiled back towards the cruiser, the damper stayed put attached to the anchor point on the TTP... i dont know how much force the synthetic rope had but it fair f*#@Ked back in recoil. the lesson here is no matter what rope/damper set up you have, STAND CLEAR WINCHING!

The rules reguarding a winch dampner are different depending on whether you have steel or synthetic. With synthetic, the thing that will do the damage is the hook and any other steel (shakles, pulleys etc) in the system. The rope itself will hurt but isn't going to break bones or damage people anymore than a wet towel. For this reason the rules requires a dampner within 4m of ANY steel in the setup.

With wire then the dampner must be in the centre 1/3.

I've seen plenty of synthetic break and normally it goes nowhere. When there is recoil, I'm sure you wouldn't want to be at the end of it but you are going to walk away with maybe some skin missing but that's about it.

The reality is if you follow the simple rules of keeping clear of a rope then it is irrelevant what it is and where it breaks. In a WC the biggest risk is to the driver and the way the dampners are required does as mich as practical to protect them.

At the end of the day, winching is dangerous and nothing can change that so all you can do is remove as much risk as practical.

darinz wrote:

At the end of the day, winching is dangerous and nothing can change that so all you can do is remove as much risk as practical.

exacttly!!!

darinz wrote:At the end of the day, winching is dangerous and nothing can change that so all you can do is remove as much risk as practical

But my point is that when a towtruck driver is using a winch, he/she doesn't tell people to stand clear.. this is my whole point....

Towtruck drivers NEVER tell people to get clear when they are using their gear, they just do what they do and don't care about others... why are they not educated when they get their towtruck licence?

never thought of it like that suzuki1k even when winching the big trucks like on highway patrol last night the towie was standing at the back of his truck with his winch controls pulling close to or maybe more than 30tonne of truck out the trees.
every thing on them is 10 times bigger and powers at be dont do a song and dance at them

When I was a recovery commander in the army we did lots of call outs to trucks rolled/crashed on the desert road. the truckies loved us as even though we took a bit longer, we worked the math and normally got them out first pull with no extra damage. (plus it was free apart from a couple of crates of piss). The truckies always used to tell us the horror stories of Heavy recovery firms having a single man doing the recovery and more than often damaging the truck more during multiple failed pulls. Most of the Recovery company men are cowboys who have a day lesson on how it is done and sent off. crazy
In the end the Recovery companies complained that the Army was taking work away from them so we stopped most of the call outs unless the road was closed or asked by the cops.