When shopping around for winches, you’ll see there are stacks of features, from reduction gear ratios, the horsepower ratings and whether it has wireless functionality or not, but one of the least appreciated features of a winch is actually one of the most critical features you can find on your winch.

We’re talking about your winch cable, there are 2 classes of winch cable commonly available, these are typically steel, or UHMWPE otherwise known as synthetic, but which one is perfect for your setup.

Steel or Synthetic?

Ever since the introduction of winches to the 4WDing world the exponentially increasing amount effort that would be put into an old school hemp rope, found in the early PTO engine powered winches, would easily break and snap these older fibrous materials.

The limited strength and extremely heavy weight of old natural fiber ropes, that are relatively out dated, just simply are not up to the task of pulling fully loaded modern 4WD’s out of trouble, and the progression requires stronger and more powerful systems, for safety and performance offroad.

The limited control afforded by a winch operating off an engines power led to the development in the late 50’s of the electric winch which is powered from your vehicles battery, and along with it the inclusion of steel cabled winches that have since been considered the norm, that is until very recently.

With materials science in the modern age taking leaps and bounds, the introduction of synthetic fibre cables that shared not just the strength of steel but were also many times lighter than their steel counterparts, lead to the natural progression into their use in the offroad world, coming as standard equipment on many 4wd winches today.

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Just like any technological advancements, when there are new technologies released people approach them with skepticism. However, with their ultra-high strength and extremely light weight design synthetic cables also have many features that make them ideal for offroad use.

Firstly, a steel cable tends to kink and break down over time, resulting in sharp splinters and even separation of the strands from the crimping at the hook end. Another very useful characteristic of synthetic winch cables is their ability to float on top of water, unlike steel, the bright colour also makes a synthetic winch cable perfect for using in muddy and wet environments with much less risk of rusting and corrosion.

Along with weighing much less, you’ll find that whipping out your winch cable when things get tough, is a much easier process due to not having to drag a heavy cable all the way out to your anchor point.

What makes a good synthetic cable?

With all winch cables having a few different jobs, the most important one is the ability to pull the full load rating of the winch. This was made a more difficult task particularly when your vehicle is fully loaded and buried to the rails your vehicle can have a massive amount of suction (up to 300% of your GVM) you can have a massive issue with under rated gear – this is why it is important to fit your vehicle with the highest rating you can reasonably find.

For an example the Domin8r X 12,000lb Winch includes a heavy duty 9mm thick Ultra High Molecular Weight Poly Ethylene rope which is 26m long. A typical UHMWPE 9.5mm thick cable is capable of withstanding nearly 20,000lbs of force before breaking, this means that even with mild damage from the tracks your cable will still be strong!

Maintenance

Whilst your synthetic cable is extremely resilient and offers some excellent performance enhancements compared to your old heavy steel options, there are a handful of things you should do when you get home, if you’ve had to use your winch on the tracks!

When you are winching in your 4WD offroad, you will hardly ever encounter a straight line pull where your winch cable stays clean, and respools itself smoothly and without trouble back onto the winch drum.
Over time your winch cable spooling on one side of the drum will bind, and dirt and mud left to “fester” will eventually damage a loaded cable slowly breaking the fibers, one by one.

When you are giving your, vehicle a clean after you come home from a trip into the bush you should spend a couple of minutes making sure your winch will stay strong and work well for years to come.

So, unspool your winch all of the way and feed your winch cable into a bucket of water, this will rinse most of the excess dirt and mud off, once the water is extremely dirty, you should dump the dirty water out, and fill your bucket back up with fresh water and some household dish detergent and agitate the whole lot, slowly work the fibers loosening the weave and let the mud wash out.

Rinse out the winch cable making sure you get rid of all of the soapy water – Once your cable is washed, you can start winching it back in, this takes a few minutes but if you guide your cable back in, you should slowly move all the way left and right on the drum, whilst putting a bit of tension on the cable.

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With the cable wound back in, neatly you have a winch that is ready to roll, the next time you hit the tracks!

There is a lot to know about proper applications of your winch, and how to maintain it, but hopefully this article gives you the knowledge and skills to choose the right winch rope for your 4WD and maintaining it!