I am planning to purchase a winch for my 2012 Jeep Wrangler Sahara and I might just get a Warn Winch? Should I go for it? I have read so many good reviews about the brand.

What I see and hear from my nephew: Warn is more than OK. Just 1 advice: don't forget to put a rope on top of the cable before you start pulling. You sure will remember this advice when your cable breaks...

The Warn Winch seems to have a pretty good name down here in Australia so it is certainly worth considering. I would look at buying a full Recovery Kit to go with your 4WD...it will make life a lot easier for you.

Recovery Kits

I would strongly advise doing some sort of course of instruction in how to use your recovery gear.

Aloysius wrote:

What I see and hear from my nephew: Warn is more than OK. Just 1 advice: don't forget to put a rope on top of the cable before you start pulling. You sure will remember this advice when your cable breaks...

Mythbusters did a whole show on this and couldnt even break the skin with a breaking cable. They tried and tried and had a very high tension on the cables in their tests.

What is dangerous is if your block and tackle break free, those can be flung as a projectile and seriously cause damage.

I saw recently instead of using a metal clevis or shackle to secure ends of pulleys or cables, a company has a clever rope attachment that stores very little energy but is rated into the +30k load range. I'll see if I cant try and remember where I saw that thing.

Oh and to the OP, yes Warn winches are the bomb. Quality units for sure.


-DallanC

Gator Jaw Shackle. Thats the rope shackle thing. I learned about it here, middle of the video.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhYl517dIYI


-DallanC

DallanC wrote:

Aloysius wrote: What I see and hear from my nephew: Warn is more than OK. Just 1 advice: don't forget to put a rope on top of the cable before you start pulling. You sure will remember this advice when your cable breaks... Mythbusters did a whole show on this and couldnt even break the skin with a breaking cable. They tried and tried and had a very high tension on the cables in their tests. -DallanC

People have been killed here with recovery gear. Take care on how you use it

tikkat3 wrote:

DallanC wrote: Aloysius wrote: What I see and hear from my nephew: Warn is more than OK. Just 1 advice: don't forget to put a rope on top of the cable before you start pulling. You sure will remember this advice when your cable breaks... Mythbusters did a whole show on this and couldnt even break the skin with a breaking cable. They tried and tried and had a very high tension on the cables in their tests. -DallanC People have been killed here with recovery gear. Take care on how you use it

Agree Tiks...a cable under extreme tension is very dangerous if it snaps or lets go. One of the first things they teach you in the Army when learning to recover a bogged vehicle is DO NOT step over the cable and stay well clear of the cable when winching. You will often see guys throw a chaff or hessian bag over the centre of a winch cable when winching. I suppose this serves two purposes...1. It identifies the cable at a glance, and 2. If the cable should let go it would help reduce the whipping effect of the cable.

For those who disagree with the danger level of a snapping cable, check out the YouTube video of an arrest cable snapping on an aircraft carrier...very scary.

Snapping Cable

Ok, I understand that there is a big difference between a winch cable and an arresting cable...but the principles are the same and the main difference is really only the size of the cable.

wire rope that is under tension and snaps is a real undie filling frightening beast of a thing....... Ive been 30 yards away from 1 1/8th steel winch rope attached to a HD11 bulldozer on one end and a big rimu log on the other when the strain got too much....far from not breaking skin trees up to 6" through got mowed down.....
the sack on cable thing is old bushmans trick theory is the sack acts a bit like a sail if it lets go and slows things down.
the bit I cant get my head around is steel chain...which I use all the time to get out of bogs.... a couple of years ago a local farmer was towing another tractor out of bog when chain snapped.end of chain came up and through rear window of tractor and smacked him in back of head......now they had one tractor stuck and another driving off across paddocks with unconsious badly injured man in driving seat.
we have a "black snake towing cable" in one fert truck and it works great,its appears to be wire rope covered with a rubber coating/wrap...it has best of both worlds,very strong like steel but has a little give like nylon.
most times a 2500kg load securing strop will get a car or uute out without any bother (just DONT tie a knot in it,use ratchet on one vechile and strop hook on the other)...we often tow out trucks with one if they loose traction on greasy paddock/hill where its a little they need not a huge effort to get unstuck/bogged.
the biggest thing for safety is "slowly slowly catchy monkey" dont rip shit and bust ..take it as slowly as possible.
our 4wd scania beasty fert trucks have full difflocks but we still get bogged,the biggest trick I have learned (the hard way over many many many wet boggy areas) is to attach tow vechile at a steep angle ,as steep as you can make it without pulling tyres off rim of stuck truck 45 degrees is great. that way the inside rear tyre stays put and truck sort of pivots out of the crap needing a whole lot less effort,when we try pulling straight it just goes deeper or takes longer to come out of clear..... when really really badly bogged we worked truck out backwards by towing sideways one way and then the other about a dozen times gaing 4-6" at a time untill we broke free of the dreaded goo.... 2 x 5 yard long heavy chains gets you a out of a lot of bother as tower can be out in dry area and make it look rediculasly easy to tweak you back out of the dreaded goo,once tyre treads are clogged we just sit and spin going nowhere,so its call buddy,get out chain and have smoko break while they come to rescue.
hope that long winded novel helps someone.

Back in my army days 1970's we got a deuce and a half cargo truck stuck. It was on the top of a hill with a large bowl in the center.Base recovery had to come and recovery us...that was after we tried to pull the truck out with two other deuce and a half queen bee's . On our try we used a long steel cable about on inch or so in thickness and we were always taught to hang a dead man on the cable to help protect against whiplash should the cable break. A dead man is a loop rope that is laid across the pulling cable and then looped back around the cable on the inside of the outside loop. A bag with weight like sand etcetera is attached at the end of the loop on the inside and should the cable break it acts like a decelerator to slow the cable down and lessen the whiplash. Well we didn't have a dead man and we pulled anyways. The cable snapped whiplashed back to the cab of the deuce and thank God the steel cab protected me. Lesson learned. With any cable a dead man is always the way to go. TEMR