Painting winch rope.

in the interest of safety you should be using a dampener on you winch cable/rope. Ours is bright orange and is easily seen.
Dave

A correctly used synthetic rope is safer than wire

Eric
If winch ropes are hard to see at a distance, why it that a problem?
If you are as close as the anchor point or the vehicle then you aren't at a distance and you can see the rope.
It is unwise to be near a steel cable under tension and definitely not in line with it.
Purely because the vehicles situation means a winch and a cable are in use, aren't the people on site aware of this happening and at a safe distance?

Is someone likely to come cruising through between the anchor and the vehicle and not see the cable?

As mentioned above, the use of a blanket type dampener is advised and increases the safety or decreases the risks involved.

I can't see it being a problem unless you are winching at night and people are crossing the cable while under tension, not recommended.
Sorry, but I haven't considered painting a cable.
Cheers
Ross M

G`day Eric,

" but as I say I care about safety so will stick with the steel."
I suggest that if you care about safety that you change from steel cable to orange coloured Dynema Rope from a reputable manufacturer.

I would think that a painted steel cable would need a fair bit of attention after each use to clean it and possibly repaint it, depending of the type of use it got.
Then of course over time it will get fairly grotty while on the drum unless you have a cover for it.

Regards,

Scrubby.

What sort of distance are we talking about 100mts 500mts or more who finds it hard to see the on coming traffic ? Will they not see that there are vehicles in the area doing something maybe a flashing light on the roof and some signs. For the amount of times you use a winch and the situations you would use them in I hardly see where painting the rope would help. Save you money and use a reflective blanket as suggested. It could attract unwanted attention in town as well from thieves.

I think you're a bit to safety conscious, are you a safety officer?

Much like all the rest have said..... plus it's not like you're going to have 20 or more people standing around whilst winching and it's not likely you will be doing 10 winches a day.

Like all health and safety officers, they try to find a solution for a problem thats not even there and in the process; confuses all involved and in some cases increase the chance of risk by manufacturing an environment where everyone thinks they are safe.

Maybe you should educate the people around you first...... if you have a vicious dog, train the people to be cautious around the dog, not try to train the dog and don't tell the people.

We use very similar ropes in industrial lifting and hauling and have done so for many decades.

In industrial lifting it is considered undesirable and unhelpful to paint " gear" in general.
In general it actually produces more problems that it solves.

Appart from the fact that, It would be almost impossible to get paint to stick to wire rope even in the short term.

Flexible steel wire rope depends on having an absorbent core soaked in lubricant and over its life this lubricant is dispensed into the strands of the rope....a flexible steel wire rope in healthy condition should have an oily coating on each and every strand.
This makes it hard to get paint to stick for starters.

Even IF you could get paint to stick by cleaning the outer surface of the wire rope, wire rope stretches quite a lot under load and this would give the paint a pretty hard time.

There are coloured wire ropes out there, but they use pretty clever methods to do it.
Some that i know of are more akin to dying than painting and some are done strand by strand.

As others have said, the problem you are quite rightly seeing is dealt with in other ways both in industry and in off road practice.

As has been mentioned, the first and most significant improvement you can make to your winch is fitting it with a good quality purpose made synthetic winch rope.

It will nearly halve the weight of your winch.
Provide several significant safety improvements, due to its lighter weight and significanly less stretch.

In addition, there ARE well thaught out and accepted safety procedures for managing the risks associated with winches and winch ropes.

In both industry, vehicle towing and 4wd recovery, we use flags and markers on our ropes.
In 4WD recovery our flag and our damper are often combined into one item.

A pretty well standard winch rope damper can be purchased from a range of suppliers for between $25 & $75, depending on how fancy and how ell you shop.

If you have a winch or a snatch strap you should have at least one of these on board and you should use it every time you roll out a rope or strap.

Persoanally I carry two.

Please make yourself aware of the established safety procedures surrounding winches and straps used in 4wd recovery.
Adherance to those is what will save your life, not painting your rope.

cheers

Thanks Gentlemen
What prompted this was a a recovery I was doing with a vehicle over the side. The winch is on a tow truck at about eye level. 2 young blokes came around a bend on dirt bikes ignoring the witches hats and very nearly hit the rope. I did try plastic ropes but it cost me a lot when the plastic rope broke and dropped a $100,000 car. Plastic ropes need to be protected from UV and Ozone as it makes them brittle. Anyone who runs a plastic winch on a 4x4 should take it of the drum and store it in a light proof box. I can not do that because I use my winch several times a day. Eric.

I am so inspired. I am going downstairs to paint my wheel barrow so that I won't trip over it.

An industry built upon itself . . . Common sense lost. All to true. And it has destroyed a person's responsibility to look after themselves.

I like the one that doesn't allow you to clean your glasses because you are not allowed to take them off to clean them. Perfect example of power gone mad.

What a chuckle.

And I don't wear thongs mowing the lawn either.

While I am on this subject; the paddle pop stick that shows "Slow down". To what speed must we slow? We slowed down to 30 and this big fat slob is still waving and going mad.

Phil (without high visibility vest)

Hi Eric,
Check out marine coating suppliers for heavy shipping, I can't remember the manufacturer ( they were from Norway or Germany I think) but you can get a trick " paint like" coating for cables, white in colour that dries to a non tacky flexible finish. The cable looks like it is plastic coated, very trick.