Over the last few years more and more winches are coming fitted from the factory with a synthetic winch rope, whilst the good old boys may think this is “new fangled” or “not as good as the old stuff” there are many reasons why you should either upgrade the rope in your winch from steel cable to UHMWPE synthetic cable like the style found in the Adventure Kings winch Range.

Light weight!

A 4X4 Steel winch cables can weigh up to 400 grams per meter of cable this may not sound too heavy but over roughly 30m of cable the difference between the newer light weight UHMWPE synthetic cable which typically weighs between 40-60 grams adds up very quickly. Being between 1/8 and 1/10^th the total weight of a steel cable can be around 12 kilograms, where its synthetic equivalent usually weighs in around 1.5 – 2 kilograms over the whole winch cable.

Not only is this weight difference paramount when unspooling and carrying out the winch cable to your anchor point, but also as a constant load on the front of your 4WD. By permanently lugging around an extra 10 kg on the very front of your vehicle, you may as well leave a bag of cement on your bonnet. The extra weight can have an effect on braking, suspension components, and even your vehicles handling by altering your steering geometry.

Lighter is obviously better!

Stronger breaking strength

With the lightweight nature of synthetic winch cable, it’s a little easy to assume it isn’t quite as strong as it’s steel equivalent. However this is definitely not the case. When comparing like for like the average 9mm thick steel cable has a breaking strain of around 12,200lb (5,533.8Kg) where the equivalent 9mm thick synthetic cable from 4WD Supacentre is around 15,432lb (7000Kg) which is a massive improvement on the old style steel cable.

Whilst the steel cables seem stronger, they tend to break with a much higher stored energy, basically exploding at the point of failure!

Low Stretch
With the low stretch characteristics of the synthetic style winch cable and low mass per meter, in the case of a catastrophic failure the cable has barely any energy stored within it, meaning that even if it does happen to recoil, the energy is minimal vectored along the cable length and extremely unlikely to injure spectators, making the most dangerous part of the winch recovery the metal at the anchor point. This means you can make recoveries much safer and easier.

When a steel cable is chosen, failure is more likely with a lighter load and when the failure happens the elasticity of the steel means that the cable has the tendency to snap like a rubber band. The lay of a winch cable (twist) also means that the cable tends to explode outwards as it recoils, and due to the mass of the cable once it is recoiling it can do quite a bit of damage to spectators and vehicles.

For this reason, you need to use your winch dampener in different ways, depending on the cable style, with a steel cable, placing your winch dampener somewhere towards the middle of the cable. In the event of failure this location will help to prevent the mass of the cable recoiling through the air potentially smashing windshields and body panels.

When using a synthetic winch cable, it is safest practice to situate your recovery dampener on the metal gear used at the anchor end of the recovery, including snatch blocks, shackles, and cable hooks as these components can be sheared off resulting in dangerous projectiles.

Ability to Resplice in failure

With steel winch cables, upon failure the entire winch cable needs to be replaced which is a disaster, this could result in having to abandon the vehicle, or even wait until another 4WD passes through the area. Where as a synthetic winch cable offers the ability to be able to be respliced together if it fails to complete the recovery and get the vehicle free albeit with a slightly shorter winch cable.

Buoyancy

With steel having the tendency to sink in deep mud, if you drop the cable into the mud, you’ll probably be going for a bit of a swim to retrieve the hook. With a synthetic winch cable it is naturally buoyant, meaning if you drop it in water, the cable will float to the surface allowing you to simply grab the cable and recover the hook.

Splinters

With steel cables, if a strand breaks, you tend to get sharp splinters forming which can injure hands, for this reason recovery gloves must always be used to handle steel cable. Not so with a synthetic winch rope, if a fiber does break it simply curls up and out of the way this can also be used as an indicator about the condition of your winch rope, with a more damaged rope being quite fussy and frayed, it may be time to replace your winch cable!