[Chaldaean]

I just installed a Milemarker 12K hydraulic and used it for the first time this past weekend (picture of the weekend can be found here, if you're interested).

I used it to pull another rig and then respooled.

A bit down the road, I used it again and was greeted by a rats nest of line.

My questions are:

(1) Do you guys nicely respool your line after every use?

(2) Is there a thread out there that talks about the best way to respool (rewrap or whatever the proper term is)? I couldn't find one.

Here is what the line looked like when I went to freespool it out; it was a hassle as it got caught within itself.

Thanks, All.

.

[IBCRUSN]

I did the same thing when I changed over to synthetic rope before I tensioned it. Unspool the rope down to the last 5 wraps and respool under tension just as you would steel cable. Something as simple as hooking up to a tree and spooling the rope with the service brakes creating the load. Synthetic rope does stretch a little from no tension to fully loaded and to alleviate what you show in the pic re-spooling under tension will take care of it.

[craptabulous]

synthetic has a tendincy to jam between the cracks , its the nature of the beast .

but as ibcrusn said , put a load on it and wrap it neatly and tight , it takes two people to do it right .

[Scott_sFZJ80]

The two mentioned above is what I do for respooling, but I only do that at the end of the trip. During the trip I typically wrap the unspooled line around my front bar or set it up on the rack in the rear.

[woody]

Same process for the initial wrap...under tension...I usually do it 2-3x a year

It IS the nature of synth line to have it wedge like that....at the GATOR event, I winched a LOT and took the time to re-wrap after each set of pulls (I was using mine to pulls a handful of rigs up)

'field' wrapping basically consists of un-spooling until the remaining line on the spool is 'cleanly' wrapped....then, with a friend on the controller and you about 5-6' ahead of the bumper, you look thru the fairlead while your assistant begins winching the line in...HAND OVER HAND feed the line in, with LOOSE gloves on and visually inspect the wraps as you go....if it crosses at all, have the assistant stop, WAIT for the winch to stop it's pull, THEN reverse...hand over hand allows constant tension and greatly reduces the chances of the line catching your gloves...and be SURE the control operator can see your hands...on my FJ40, the control is on the dash, so they need to see my hands OVER the hood.

switching between in/out and NOT stopping will eventually strip the winch gears...not good

having witnessed some injuries with winches, I'm 'a little weird' about using them myself, and am pretty strict about what I expect

[96r50]

Originally Posted by Chaldaean

I just installed a Milemarker 12K hydraulic and used it for the first time this past weekend (picture of the weekend can be found here, if you're interested).

Cool pics! Could you do even a short writeup about installing/plumbing the hydraulic winch in your truck? I've been thinking about this for a while, and it would be nice to see how someone else did it.