Winch rope/motor questions

I've been thinking about building a winch this spring and am looking for prices and places to buy.
Where can u buy a 1000' of spectra or other non stretch rope? Is 1000' enough, to much?

Also, what Horse Power of engine is required?

1k might be to much. I'm not sure where you can buy that much rope. For the mottor 8-10hp for the 200lb to be able to deep start.

www.winchskating.com for many answers.

Justin,

I second www.winchskating.com

We sell a great winch rope that is PVC coated for awesome protection, and many pulls. It also glows for winching in the surf. We also have CNC machined aluminum spools that look like low profile rims: beats building it yourself...

6.5 hp motor with CVT will deep water a 190 lb - 200 lb rider. 8 hp - 9 hp with CVT will deep water start up to 300 lb rider. Only problem with the bigger engine over the 6.5hp is that it adds an additional 30 lb - 40 lb of weight to the winch



Ken Land
Bullet Lines
www.bulletlines.com

Here is a decent article on our website about wakeboard winches. http://www.bulletlines.com/wakeboard-winch.htm


Thanks,

Ken Land
Bullet Lines
www.bulletlines.com

Awesome guys! I took a look at the website and found the forum to be quite informative. I need to sit for a few days and just read and figure things out and decide if I can afford to do it.

There are so many ideas on that web-site. It has totally given me the bug...I might make one out of a snowblower.

That site has helped me more than I can explain. I went with a 9hp Subaru/Robin engine and a Tav-2 Torque Converter. As for line-I choose the 500ft Straightline winch line. It is made out of there 'alloy line' which is super light and strong. Boarders Paradise can special order it for you. It is around $280-300

We went with 6.5 hp Honda Racing Go-Cart engine with stage 1 modifications; it puts out about 9 hp. Beauty of our winch is that it weighs less than 100 lbs. We can deep water start a 300 lb + rider. For rope we went with our own Bullet Lines 1000' Coated Winch Rope because it's better than anything else on the market gauranteed!







Ken Land
Bullet Lines
www.bulletlines.com

http://www.reddenmarine.com/site/new-detail.cfm?id=AMRAMSTL764

This is the best rope for the $ period. $200 for winch line is b.s. This cost us $84 for 600 feet and works great, no stretch and super durable. My friend didn't hit the break in time and the handle broke before this rope, TWICE.Its actually bigger than 1/8" as you can see. We used it all summer and a few hundred pulls in the winter and it is holding up great. IMO 600 feet is plenty, we hardly ever use it all, 1000 ft is a 3 footbal field walk!!!

by the way, that is 1/4" pegboard

Mathew,

I can appreciate your opinion... Our $200 coated winch rope is a little more expensive, but our coated winch rope is not for everyone. This winch rope is made for the urban wincher who drags their rope on cement, around trees, and ETC. It is also designed for winching in the surf. Our coated winch rope was designed specifically for winching, and is not just a spool of rope reeled on a winch. I gaurantee your rope cannot take 1/10 of the abuse our coated winch rope can take. We will be coming out with a lower end winch rope that will retail for cheaper than the rope you show here.

Picking a winch rope really comes down to how extreme you winch. There are Peter Pan winchers, and there are Rambo winchers. If you are a Rambo wincher, then you will want to purchase a Bullet Lines coated winch rope.

Thanks,

Ken Land
Bullet Lines
www.bulletlines.com

I guess to save $120 I will be careful and not drag my rope on the ground and I am pretty sure trees don't do much damage. 10 times more durable is a waste of $ IMO. I did a search on Bulletlines on this site and was not impressed by peoples opinions and the comments you made Kenneth and that led me to buy an accurate line for the boat and this winch rope.
I did a ton of searcing and teasting of rope and believe for the money the stuff I bought is perfect for me, buy 10 feet of it and test it for yourself.
If money is no object and you can afford to build and awsome winch like the one Kenneth has then spend $325 on rope. Most people don't have the green to lay out for a honda racing motor with mods, a torque a verter, a sweet aluminum spool and what appears to be a tig welded frame.

Here is a pic before we put the brake & idler wheel on and cleaned and painted the frame. About $350, I will take a pic of the finished product and post later.

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quote:

I gaurantee your rope cannot take 1/10 of the abuse our coated winch rope can take.

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You've been around for a little while now, and you've basically been saying the same thing since day one. Now it's totally cool that you stand behind your product like that, but on the other hand, you have yet to provide any type of evidence to support ANY of your claims. You say your winch line is designed specifically for winching, yet its specifications aren't any different than some of the wake-specific lines. There's already a line that glows in the dark, there's already coated line that resists tearing, and at least one rope company is selling their line in spools for winching. My best guess is that you've just combined these features into one rope and now you're trying to convince people that this is something new and cool. Additionally, the 2,000lb tensile strength isn't anything new. Out of the specs that I've seen, most mid to upper level lines carry a 2,000lb rating, with one reaching up into the 4,000lb level. So again, nothing new. And I've never seen or heard of any semi-decent wake lines snapping while being used to winch.

Have you done any strength testing on lines...perhaps testing the strength or durability of your line versus another line? If so, could you possibly provide some data or pictures that might support your claims? Obviously, the coated wake lines aren't designed to withstand the rigors of winching, so they will rip with time, but aside from that I honestly see no difference between what you're making and a good quality unbroken wake line on a 1,000 ft spool.

Please, prove me wrong. I'd honestly like to know if what you're making is any different than what's already out there (aside from the coating), because I think that selling unbroken spools of line is a really cool thing for winching.

Scott,

I can give you the break down:

We have tested many ropes on our own winch before building the winch rope we have today. We have not had our rope tested at Boeing testing facilities, or any other lab. Any of our strength tests have come direct from the patent holder and manufacturer of raw Dyneema fiber "DSM".

We sell a thermal coated wakeboard rope, and our winch rope is not the same thing. The core of our winch rope is 1/8" Dyneema SK-75, and our wakeboard ropes are made with 7/64" Dyneema SK-60: the difference between the 2 versions of Dyneema is quality and strength of the Dyneema fiber. The coatings on our winch ropes are made with a 1.5mm High-density polyethylene (HDPE) coating where our wakeboard ropes are made with a 1mm Lower Density Polyethylene coating. HDPE is a stronger plastic due to some of the molecular properties which I do not fully understand (I'm not a scientist). The glow technology we use in our rope is not just a standard glow in the dark technology: we use a daytime glow technology that emits a florecent day charge: we are working to make the daytime glow much brighter.

Now from personal experience I can tell you that our rope burns thru metal. We winch the beach a lot, and anybody with a winch that uses a fairlead will tell you that the sand will ruin the fairlead within a day. When our fairlead goes bad our winch rope burns thru the metal rollers.

I have also been told stories of our rope jumping the spool and going thru the chain and sprocket with very little or no damage.

If you would like a reference, there are many people on winchskating.com that can tell you what they think of our product.

I hope I have answered your questions. If not, please feel free to ask.

Thanks,

Ken Land
Bullet Lines
www.bulletlines.com

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quote:

We have tested many ropes on our own winch before building the winch rope we have today.

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and what did you find? How many of these ropes were wakeboard lines, and how many of those broke during testing? Any of them? Or did the outer jacket just rip off immediately? What did you notice about these lines that you didn't like, and wanted to improve upon?

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quote:

Any of our strength tests have come direct from the patent holder and manufacturer of raw Dyneema fiber "DSM".

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So basically you never actually strength tested anything out in the field, no?

Do you know the exact construction of every other model of rope out there? If not, I can't see how you could be so sure of the fact that your winch line is 10 times more durable than anything else, or that it's any stronger than the next rope. Not without strength testing the rest of the lines, that is, and you already eluded to not testing the rope yourself.

Many wakeboard mainlines are strong enough to eat through fairleads. Same goes for eyelets.

Scott,

I really do not want to argue about this. I'm very sorry that this thread upset you. I'll answer this last set of questions, but after this I would respectfully ask you to email me directly for any other questions. I feel that some of your questions on this last post have already been answered.

The results of the ropes we tested on our winch is proprietary knowledge. I hope you would understand the amount of work and time we put into developing our product, and I dont think you would divulge all results in public if the shoe were on the other foot. However, we did test many different types of ropes, and yes, we tested the Samson Amsteel that Mathew posted in this thread. The final winch rope product we have listed on our website is what we decided to go with, and is the improved product.

We don't need strength test equipment to test our ropes. The fiber manufacturer of Spectra and Dyneema, or any other fiber manufacturer for that matter, will give you lab test stress results free of charge. Why would we or any other ski rope manufacturer invest in testing equipment when we would receive the exact same reults (does not make business sense).

I never said that our winch rope is 10 x more durable than every other rope out there. What I did say is that our winch rope is 10 x more durable than the Samson Amsteel Mathew posted on this thread. Fact! Our coated winch rope will last 10 x longer, if not more, than the Samson Amsteel. Our winch rope has a heavy duty coating to protect against abraision; the Amsteel does not.

You are right! There are many ropes that will burn thru steel, but the ones we tested on our winch eventually had lots of abraision, or just plain snapped.

BTW... Durability has nothing to do with strength testing. Durability is a broad term. The way I used it on this thread was to describe the abraision resistance our rope has compared to Amsteel: maybe I should have communicated this better.

Obviously I'm very proud of our product line, and the product decisions we have made. We have very high customer satisfaction, and we plan to continue making great wakeboard lines.

Thanks,

Ken Land
Bullet Lines
www.bulletlines.com

Hey Ken... I think you rock.... your showing how you really are a stand up guy!!! You are trying to help push the sport, which is exactly what the winching world needs!!

Winching is a fairly new sport, and you already have stepped up and created a product to help everyone.

Scott a... whats ur problem.... your acting like a little child. If you really are this interested in THE PRODUCT(not just making some stupid point) Why don't you email Ken and I'm sure he would be happy to help you. Your trying to make a fool out of Ken, but in the process, you've made ur self look like an ass.

This post didn't even involve you, and the only reason you got involved was to try and cause a problem. Let it go