I was rereading the thread on the Powerpuller where there is a bit of discussion about winch ratings. Specifically, there was a mention of "8000lbs" winches that can barely lift 1500lbs vertically. And that was apparently ascribed to the use of safety factors in the ratings IIUC. That seems a bit odd to me, although some winches do lose a lot of pulling potential with multiple wraps of course.
I won't repeat here the discussion and apparent misconceptions about forces, masses, WLL and breaking limits etc but I got a bit curious and so called Warn to try and get a definitive answer. It didn't quite work out that way because of lawyerish considerations but I got close I think.
Basically, I wanted to know if my 12,000lbs Warn winch could exert an actual real force of 12,000 lbs or not. As I mentioned in that other thread, from an engineering point of view, a force is a force is a force, and a force of 12,000 lbf is the same thing vertically or horizontally, safety factors be damned.
Basically, the Warn tech would not answer the question about whether the winch could lift 12,000 lbs vertically. He was nice but it sounded like he just could not or would not talk freely. I assume company rules due to ****** lawyers (and moronic customers).
So, to try and make sense of this around the lawyerly vagueness, I asked something along the lines of "assume I tie my winch horizontally (cuz vertical is taboo apparently -sheesh) to a house (that won't move), there is a force sensor on the line, will it read a force of 12,000 lbf?" I asked this a couple of times and he answered yes to both after I had made clear I was talking about real forces, not safety factors considerations.
So, assuming he knows what he's talking about and understood me, I take that to mean that my M12000 is actually capable of exerting 12,000 lbf horizontally or vertically or at any angle you choose. And NOT just able to move a 12,000lbm object horizontally with some unknown friction factor (as some folks seemed to believe in that other thread).
Now, whether that is a WLL or ultimate load is a different question altogether of course. The above only refers to the pulling power of the drivetrain presumably. In fact, when I looked into it a while back I was surprised to see that the typical 3/8" wire rope like that coming OEM with the M12000 winch has indeed a breaking limit of not a great deal more than the 12,000 lbf in question. Or IOW that if you are exerting 12,000 lbf with the winch -which I was just told you can, technically speaking- you are maybe at the verge of breaking the rope if not something on the winch. And so maybe the unwillingness to talk about lifting may well do with the fact that 12,000 lbf is really the overall breaking spec on the winch, not the WLL. (Somewhat disturbingly, the same issue crops up with published ratings of 12,000lbs on some shackle blocks out there, that when I asked a tech was revealed to be breaking load, not WLL. I thought that was more than a bit misleading. But another story....)
So, make what you want of that. That's as close to a clear answer as I can get for now. Interested in your insight if you know more or better.
Now that I think about it, there was an article I read some years back about a test done in Oz I think about stalling winches with good dyno numbers. I should try to find this again and see what numbers they got.
I won't repeat here the discussion and apparent misconceptions about forces, masses, WLL and breaking limits etc but I got a bit curious and so called Warn to try and get a definitive answer. It didn't quite work out that way because of lawyerish considerations but I got close I think.
Basically, I wanted to know if my 12,000lbs Warn winch could exert an actual real force of 12,000 lbs or not. As I mentioned in that other thread, from an engineering point of view, a force is a force is a force, and a force of 12,000 lbf is the same thing vertically or horizontally, safety factors be damned.
Basically, the Warn tech would not answer the question about whether the winch could lift 12,000 lbs vertically. He was nice but it sounded like he just could not or would not talk freely. I assume company rules due to ****** lawyers (and moronic customers).
So, to try and make sense of this around the lawyerly vagueness, I asked something along the lines of "assume I tie my winch horizontally (cuz vertical is taboo apparently -sheesh) to a house (that won't move), there is a force sensor on the line, will it read a force of 12,000 lbf?" I asked this a couple of times and he answered yes to both after I had made clear I was talking about real forces, not safety factors considerations.
So, assuming he knows what he's talking about and understood me, I take that to mean that my M12000 is actually capable of exerting 12,000 lbf horizontally or vertically or at any angle you choose. And NOT just able to move a 12,000lbm object horizontally with some unknown friction factor (as some folks seemed to believe in that other thread).
Now, whether that is a WLL or ultimate load is a different question altogether of course. The above only refers to the pulling power of the drivetrain presumably. In fact, when I looked into it a while back I was surprised to see that the typical 3/8" wire rope like that coming OEM with the M12000 winch has indeed a breaking limit of not a great deal more than the 12,000 lbf in question. Or IOW that if you are exerting 12,000 lbf with the winch -which I was just told you can, technically speaking- you are maybe at the verge of breaking the rope if not something on the winch. And so maybe the unwillingness to talk about lifting may well do with the fact that 12,000 lbf is really the overall breaking spec on the winch, not the WLL. (Somewhat disturbingly, the same issue crops up with published ratings of 12,000lbs on some shackle blocks out there, that when I asked a tech was revealed to be breaking load, not WLL. I thought that was more than a bit misleading. But another story....)
So, make what you want of that. That's as close to a clear answer as I can get for now. Interested in your insight if you know more or better.
Now that I think about it, there was an article I read some years back about a test done in Oz I think about stalling winches with good dyno numbers. I should try to find this again and see what numbers they got.
Last edited:
