Hand winch question- synthetic rope?

[ed kerns]

I don't have a lot of experience with winches and I'm looking for advice. I have a trailer with a heavy lift gate and it's designed to be lifted and lowered with a hand winch with an automatic break. It has a 800 lb rated winch and has always used a 1/8 steel cable. My guess is it only needs to lift half that amount of weight, but because it's been in service about 7 years, I want to change the winch, strictly for safety reasons (basic wear and tear).  I bought a 1200lb winch as a replacement, thinking the lower gear ratio would make for easier cranking. My question is about the cable. I think I'd I'd like to use synthetic rope, just because the line gets handled a lot and it would seem to be easier on the hands. I'm thinking 3/16 or 1/4 would be sufficiently load rated - but of course will confirm that. This is a piece of equipment used by a variety of people, so I am most concerned with safety and convenience. I appreciate any advice!

[Cooler]

Synthetic rope can be very dangerous.  It stretches and stores energy and if it breaks it will release that energy with great force.  It is fully capable of taking out an eye or breaking a bone.

A friend of mine was a tree surgeon.  He was felling a tree and he wanted to make sure that it did not fall on the house.  He tied a large guage nylon rope to the upper trunk of the tree and tied off on the pintle hook of his truck.  He pulled on the tree with the truck, but a bit too hard as the rope broke, and the snapping rope drove through a picture window and knocked over an expensive breakfront furniture piece.

Steel line, on the other hand does not store energy like that and is much safer.  It will snap, but not recoil.  

I would not use synthetic rope for a winch or for towing.

[TDKPE]

Look at New England Ropes on a site like https://www.westmarine.com/running-rigging to get an idea of what you need for the SWL your winch will experience.  Single or double-braid is what's usually used on a winch like that, for hauling a boat up the trailer.  A grossly oversized bit of line is still cheap, so no harm in going a bit big.

You can also use Dyneema, which is as strong or stronger for the same size as SS 1x19 wire rope, and is sometimes used as standing rigging (holds the mast up, even on big boats).  It's very slippery, though, and doesn't knot well.  It's usually used with special terminations.  I'd stick with polyester braid for your application.

I hope your new winch is a brake winch, so it won't run away when lowering a load and the handle slips out of your hand.  It'll break your hand if a spinning handle hits it.

Edit: Based on Cooler's remarks, the yacht braid I linked to is low or very low stretch, and the Dyneema is even stiffer than steel wire rope. So the type of line you use does matter. 3-strand poly or nylon is the preferred rope for dock lines and anchor rodes precisely because it is stretchy and absorbs shocks better than more expensive braided line, though for some reason boaters seem to think their expensive braided, color-matched dock lines are 'better'.

[fixtureman]

I saw that tug boats went back to regular ropes over steel as they are safer and easier tohandle

[R Clark]

Synthetic ropes are preferred by quite a few ATV owners for their winches, particularly for snowplow operation.  The winch on my ATV is 2500-pound capacity winch with a steel cable.  I'm considering the switch over to synthetic as I'm getting close to needing to replace my steel cable.

[EdL]

Amsteel is an excellent rope replacement for steel cable.

amsteel blue

[John Mihich]

I was in the Navy when we switched to nylon line - terrible.  Hemp is the best for that kind of work.

[JosephP]

Pick the right rope...almost always, people who have bad experiences with rope just don't know what they are going.

Amsteel is probably the "standard" for winches on chippers (though I don't have one, so may not be any longer?)

Use a low elongation rope...don't just look at capacity, but also elongation. I buy ropes from TreeStuff.com and wesspur.com

[Robert Adams]

In a winch application I would usually go with a synthetic rope over a cable. The rope stores less energy than a cable and if it breaks it's much safer. It also doesn't fray like a steel rope but does have it's issues.

[daddo]

The original winch will work faster, and if you haven't had a problem using it, I would have stayed with that capacity- the heavier winch will take more cranking to do the same job and could wear you out or become a nuisance as well as become a hazard should something get hung up- you won't feel yourself overloading the line too much.

In any case, rope or cable both store energy. I'd just use what has been working before. However, now you should use a higher rated cable (3,000 lbs or better) since you may inadvertently place an unnecessary load on it with that heavier winch- or perhaps someone else. Don't forget that the winches load may only be 800 lbs, but somewhere in the leverage or shock of things, the actual load on the cable could be 3x times that.

My truck tail lift is rated for 1,000 lbs, it has a 5k lb cable and I have lifted 1,400 lbs unknowingly. My fault for not verifying.