Drive or neutral while winching yourself out?

Four wheel driving. Vehicle modifications. Off road driving and recovery techniques. Towing and miscellaneous vehicle topics.

Drive or neutral while winching yourself out?

Post by Seconds » 13 Jan 2017, 3:25 pm

Hi guys,

What is your take on using your engine while recovering yourself with an electric winch?

Are you using the engine to assist the winch or just rolling and letting the winch do all the work?

Cheers.
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Re: Drive or neutral while winching yourself out?

Post by p3seven » 13 Jan 2017, 3:30 pm

Lowest gear and gently help the winch. Do not spin the wheels. Do not slip the clutch.
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Re: Drive or neutral while winching yourself out?

Post by deye243 » 13 Jan 2017, 7:17 pm

low 1st
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Re: Drive or neutral while winching yourself out?

Post by tom604 » 13 Jan 2017, 7:48 pm

low as you can go, but you will always will spin the wheels in mud ,just don't dig yourself in deeper
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Re: Drive or neutral while winching yourself out?

Post by AusTac » 13 Jan 2017, 8:38 pm

Yeah low first and a tiny bit of throttle, especially in muddy areas, helps to break the suction
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Re: Drive or neutral while winching yourself out?

Post by Die Judicii » 16 Jan 2017, 2:18 pm

I tend to disagree with whats been suggested thus far, for the following reasons.

As long as the winch can handle it without stalling, or getting excessively hot, always leave the vehicle in neutral and idling.
As long as it is idling,
1) It will keep your battery/s topped up so the winch can get full power.
2) If it is an inline motor, while the fan is running it will assist in air movement/cooling across the winch, (specially on hot calm days)

When left in neutral, the winch will wind in under a steady and constant tension and therefore avoid slackness and loops that would be caused by the vehicle when it intermittently gains traction as it is coming out of the bog, even if only in low range.

It's better to winch 100% the way out onto solid ground and thus avoiding slackness in the spool.
Other wise you can damage the cable in the resulting birds nests.
Also by winding in under steady and consistent tension,, it is then ready for the next time you need it, without having to reel it all out and then redo it.

:thumbsup:
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Re: Drive or neutral while winching yourself out?

Post by tom604 » 16 Jan 2017, 7:02 pm

Die Judicii wrote:I tend to disagree with whats been suggested thus far, for the following reasons.

As long as the winch can handle it without stalling, or getting excessively hot, always leave the vehicle in neutral and idling.
As long as it is idling,
1) It will keep your battery/s topped up so the winch can get full power.
2) If it is an inline motor, while the fan is running it will assist in air movement/cooling across the winch, (specially on hot calm days)

When left in neutral, the winch will wind in under a steady and constant tension and therefore avoid slackness and loops that would be caused by the vehicle when it intermittently gains traction as it is coming out of the bog, even if only in low range.

It's better to winch 100% the way out onto solid ground and thus avoiding slackness in the spool.
Other wise you can damage the cable in the resulting birds nests.
Also by winding in under steady and consistent tension,, it is then ready for the next time you need it, without having to reel it all out and then redo it.

:thumbsup:


if you wind it on and your bogged its winding on under a lot of strain and the cable will bite in on its self and you will need to reload the winch when you get home, (slight incline,from a tree,no real pressure) and if its rope you will have to wash it :allegedly: you might avoid the tangles if your winching straight but seeing that the trees are mostly to the side of the track it all balls up on one side or the other :thumbsup:
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Re: Drive or neutral while winching yourself out?

Post by Lorgar » 16 Jan 2017, 10:54 pm

Personally, I lean more towards Die Judicii's way of thinking on winching.

If you're stuck in mud, sand or otherwise on the flat then low-range first is ok. The worst thing that can really happen is you gain some traction and forward momentum before getting stuck again, and the winch will wind in the slack (albeit in a bit of a birds-nest fashion) before going taut and taking over the task of pulling you again, relatively smoothly. After you're out you can just wind the winch out and in again to spool the wire/cable on in a more organised fashion, no harm done.

If I'm on a difficult incline though I will leave it to the winch to do the job until I'm unstuck and on ground I know the 4WD can handle by itself, and I'll disconnect the winch and drive on from there.

Reason being, you don't want to temporarily gain traction to drive up the incline faster than the winch is reeling, only to loose that traction and slide backwards, putting a shock load on the winch and cable.

Your average winch is perfectly capable of pulling a typical 2,500kg (ish) four-wheel-drive out of most situations. What they're not designed to do is arrest that 2,500kg+ of weight as it slides back down the hill, suddenly snapping taut and multiplying the load by several factors.
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Re: Drive or neutral while winching yourself out?

Post by Die Judicii » 17 Jan 2017, 12:05 pm

tom604 wrote: you might avoid the tangles if your winching straight but seeing that the trees are mostly to the side of the track it all balls up on one side or the other :thumbsup:


Natures Law Number (1)
Trees and anchor points are never allowed to be exactly where you need them.

This is why man invented the snatch block.
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Re: Drive or neutral while winching yourself out?

Post by tom604 » 17 Jan 2017, 3:43 pm

Die Judicii wrote:
tom604 wrote: you might avoid the tangles if your winching straight but seeing that the trees are mostly to the side of the track it all balls up on one side or the other :thumbsup:


Natures Law Number (1)
Trees and anchor points are never allowed to be exactly where you need them.

This is why man invented the snatch block.


they're a good thing :thumbsup: ever needed two?
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Re: Drive or neutral while winching yourself out?

Post by Die Judicii » 17 Jan 2017, 4:32 pm

I always carry 3 when off road just in case.
I have 3 hitch points across the front and 2 across the rear for different choices of angle, plus the ability to use more than
one snatch block.

So far I've never needed 2 snatch blocks to extricate the vehicle, but have used 2 to be able to winch an extra large log
onto the trailer via a ramp that I made specially for getting in the firewood.
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Re: Drive or neutral while winching yourself out?

Post by Lorgar » 20 Jan 2017, 12:46 pm

I carry 3 tree protectors (which double as a bridging girdle if/when required) and 3 snatch blocks as well.

With 3/3 I'm able to get out of the worst case scenario of needing to winch myself backwards during a solo-recovery (with my front mounted winch), not a likely scenario, but I'm covered for it.

For any situation requiring less than that it just means I have the gear to do a double line pull or change of angle, and some redundancy gear for is/when something breaks.
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Re: Drive or neutral while winching yourself out?

Post by Die Judicii » 20 Jan 2017, 8:08 pm

Agreed Lorgar,
Never hurts to be a Boy Scout does it.
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Re: Drive or neutral while winching yourself out?

Post by Flash » 25 Jan 2017, 9:44 am

If I'm on a steep, slippery hill, I'll let the winch do the work to get me over the hump or section that's stopping me.

I've seen others, including friends, drive the section they're trying to get over while using the winch, they get momentary traction, the car go forwards a metre, loses traction again sliding backwards and putting a nice shock load onto the winch. I haven't seen anyone break their winch doing this, but it's giving it a good go.

On flat, I keep the wheels turning while winching looking for the traction to drive it out.
I have an old Warn winch that still works great.

I carry a 20m extension strap, a 9m extension strap, a couple of bow shackles & winch blanket.
Each car I go out with has about the same equipment, so we have a lot of recovery options.

I'm not a fan at all of putting a big rubber band between two 3.5tonne vehicles and loading it up with energy.
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Re: Drive or neutral while winching yourself out?

Post by Lorgar » 25 Jan 2017, 12:39 pm

Flash wrote:I'm not a fan at all of putting a big rubber band between two 3.5tonne vehicles and loading it up with energy.


Any cable under tension has the potential for something to go wrong if being careless, stupid or just performing the wrong type of recovery for the situation. (Talking about people in general here, not pointing a finger at you).

In that respect winching is no safer or more dangerous than snatching.

I've done my share of snatch recoveries, from just getting someone with poor tyres off a slippery patch of ground to un-bogging a 4WD that's axle deep in mud, and never had a problem.

They don't go wrong because of the their kinetic nature, they go wrong because people do something stupid or make a mistake.

e.g.
Using chain or a non elastic rope.
Connect the strap to a tow ball or other unsuitable recovery point.
Recovering vehicle pulls away at an angle or while turning and flicks/tips.
Pulling the bogged vehicle into a bank when the wheels are hard against it instead of away from the bank.
Treat a recovery like an adrenaline sport and do it pedal to the metal with a 10 metre run off.
Have all their goofball friends standing around the vehicles hooting at the spectacle.

I'm sure you know all the usual offences.

Any snatch strap will have a min. breaking strength of 8 tonne or more, you won't even generate half that in a recover when done sensibly.

Pull in straight lines, choose the right direction for the pull, low range first (maybe second if you need a little more oomph), and no more than 2 metres slack on a dampened strap. A couple of pulls and they're out.

If that's not going to do it then a different recovery method was needed from the start.
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