New Disco on Top Gear

Whist on the off road course at Abingon the other day we watched someone being winched out of the bog hole. The guy put a tabard looking thing over the winch wire at about the middle .. I thought this might be something to do with stopping the wire lashing about if it broke?

All the best ..

T i m

Mike Jones wrote: >

Good fun, though. "Let's drive it up a vertical cliff and see how far it goes..."

And blimey, didn't Lumley turn out to be a bit of a petrolhead, eh?

just reaffirming her place as posh totty of choice

Si

On or around Mon, 8 Nov 2004 12:40:28 -0000, "Si K" enlightened us thusly:

indeed.

It's known as a winch sail or winch damper. It's effect is probably more psychological than practical. When a wire winch rope breaks the damper is supposed to slow the rope down and reduce the risk of serious damage to anyone unfortunate enough to stand in it's way. A good quality one is normally quite heavy with weights sewn into it and has a large surface area to increase wind resistance. I am fortunate enough to say I've not seen a wire rope break first hand and tend to change my wire winch rope ( rear winch) as soon as there are any signs of fish hooks (single wire breakages that stick out from the rope and will cut your hand open if you're not wearing gloves) or kinks.

I use Plasma (synthetic rope) on the front winch which I have snapped once in 3 years of use. It went with a bang but more or less just dropped to the ground (no sail), much to the relief of my winch monkey at the time who was stood about 6 feet from it. I usually don't bother with a sail with plasma rope unless the competition regs demand it. If it wasn't for the problems with abrasion for the rear winch I'd run Plasma on the rear too.

cheers

Dave W.

Seem to remember a picture in LRO many years ago of an RRC with an interesting 'peak' to the top of the windscreen frame, no windscreen and no top tailgate screen. It had, AFAICR, been attempting to recover some other vehicle using the tow hitch as an attachment point. Entire hitch detached from stuck vehicle and travelled right through RRC much to the surprise, and doubtless relief, of RRC driver. ;-)

Richard