Posted by Charlie on April 17, 1999 at 01:31:22:
In Reply to: Cabling points posted by Winget on April 15, 1999 at 11:28:40:
It's easy to say "discard a cable if kinked", but the 300' on my F350 and 330" on my M37, both Braden AHSU3s, got kinked on the first serious pull. Not horribly, but noticeably. It's impossible to avoid wind-overs in a real-life situation. The anchor point is never directly ahead of the winch. Frankly, I'd rather have the cable break than the chain/hook part, that's a projectile. Cable alone won't rocket back so hard. Besides, the breaking strength of new 7/16" cable is 19800 lbs. even kinked it's stronger than the winch's capacity. If I had to replace 300' of cable every year, that would be a bit expensive. The stuff is close to $1/foot. When cable does get messed up badly, it can be cut up into good sections with hooks or loops at each end for extensions, to carry in a tool area, the bed, or coiled around something.
Inevitable kinking is lessend as cable diameter increases, that also hedges against the weakening that kinking causes. The smaller "RV" type winches are notorious in my view for supplying minimal sized cable. The 1/4" on a 4-5000 lb winch should be replaced with 5/16", 8000 lb ers should have 3/8". The 10-12,000 electric are a problem, if you're really going to pull those loads remember the breaking strength of 3/8" cable when perfect is only 14400 lbs. Not much of a safety margin if you think it's really a 12000 lb winch (which it isn't: look at an industrial type 10000 lb winch and compare metal).
Charlie