i have posted before about possibly not needing a fairlead for your winch......wrong

the other day i am on my rancher 4x2 es and eased off into some leaf covered ruts, underneath was nothing but pudding with high center from all those big kits going through. i had yet to use my winch and so i was kind of glad to have a chance. i had no tree directly in front so i had to go a little to the right. got hooked up and started reeling in and about half-way the winch bogged down and stopped. i looked and found the cable had pulled off the spool and wound around the shaft. the stress busted the release cable *** and assembly as well as the washer and bushing were all lost in pudding. from the way it smelled they were gone.

i started trying to get the cable off the shaft by reeling out but the cable keeper kept it from tracking back onto the spool. only after reeling all the way out did it finally pull onto the spool. i then changed to a tree on the left and started taking up slack only for it to happen again so once again i had to repeat the whole process.
if i had of had a fairlead it would have kept the cable on the spool and not have wrecked my winch. so i guess i learned the hard way what can happen if you do not use a fairlead.

i wonder what superwinch will do, it is still under warrenty. sounds defective to me.


rancher

 

Something similar happened to me a few weeks back, but I do have a fairlead and it still happened. At the time mine was two weeks old and the store I bought it from oredered another one to replace it.

Good luck, I hope they help you out.

 

There are fairleads, and then there are fairleads. Roller fairleads, and hawse fairleads. A roller fairlead has rollers to minimize friction from angle pulls; a hawse fairlead is basically a smooth slot for cable passage. Both types of fairleads perform the same function adequately for ATV application: assist in straight, smooth, level spooling of the cable onto the drum.

A fairlead (roller or hawse) is desirable for ATV self-recovery because of the varying angles that may arise between the pull-point and the winch. A winch for a boat trailer or race car trailer, where the pull is always from the same direction, might nor require a fairlead.

Yet, a winch cable can become snarled, even with a fairlead. The best countermeasure to spooling off the drum is pulling under tension--either the winch load, or at least by holding tension in the cable with a gloved hand, keeping the spool wind as level and even as possible. If you spool your cable in slack, you're apt to snarl it.

Tree Farmer

 

I agree with Tree Farmer. I would say though that the roller fairlead is the way to go if at all possible. The cable will last much longer and it will put more of the winch power to pulling you out of the muck instead of having to overcome the friction resistance of the hawse type fairlead.

 

Yep those fairleads are great....my friend put his big-bear in a small creek on a very steep bank so their was a tree beside him so he pulled the winch cable out and tied it on...then it pulled it sideways up the bank. good thing he had the fairlead or the bumper wold have had scratches all over it or maybe even a dent.