Are you familiar with winches?
Do you know about safety?
Here are a couple of pages we have mirrored and not just linked to, they are for interest and to promote debate, and are not the defacto views of Peak Recovery.
The Land-Rover capstan winch has
a 8 or 10 sided drum and was designed for laid rope, not multiplait (multiplait
should be used on a smooth drum).
Manilla (a sort of grass) is best for hauling since it will stretch before breaking
unlike hemp (growing banned most places, makes excellent rope etc.).
Generally synthetic ropes should not be used with a powered capstan since the
heat generated whilst it is slipping can melt the rope and damage it.
The advantages to a capstan:
Light weight. Quite easy to use. 100% Reliable, works under water or mud.
Direct drive, no drain on the electrical system.
Precise control of the load and line speed - in or out. It's a working winch
- you can use it all day long.
You can use it to cook (see below).
The disadvantages:The ONLY big "disadvantage"
of the winch is that the engine must be running to use it.
Difficult to use if rope is wet or frozen.
Of course, if the engine is dead, you're *stuck*. Must be engaged with the engine
stationary, though it can be disengaged while running.
Line pull limited to 3,000lb on some versions, though this can be almost doubled
with a snatch block.
One capstan winch on a 1955 series
1 for a while was a Aeroparts device; I dont know if the shear pins are in the
same place on the Fairey device which is more common.
There are two shear pins on mine; one is part of the drive shaft to the winch
from t he starter dog, one is part of the capastan itself. The first one is
the weakest one of the two; it is something like a 1/4inch diameter brass pin
with the diameter reduced to about half that at each end. They are not too difficult
to replace, so long as you get the outer and inner parts of the shaft (which
the pins connect to operate the winch) lined up, and so long as you can get
at the underneath of the winch (ie just in front of the front chassis cross
member). I found it helpful to line up the holes using a steel version of the
shear pin which I made up. If you make such a pin, it will also allow you to
hand crank the engine without risking breaking the shear pin; it should not
be used for winching of course :-)
Sheer Pins: You should be able to quite happily winch 1.5 ton objects (guess
which) up steep 1:2 or 1:1 slopes, with a thick nylon rope. The only times I
broke a shear pin was either hand cranking before I made the steel pin, or when
attempting to bash the pin in before the holes were lined up. The farey capstan
winch, if used with a steel shear pin has a load capcaity of 10 000 Pounds!
Take 3 turns upwards round the capstan
and tail the rope from the side, far enough away in case anything lets go. When
in use with proper rope, you will find that the the turning of the drum as you
tail the winch will cause the turns of rope to ride u p. The further up the
drum the rope goes, the steeper the taper becomes, so the top turns of rope
bind tighter onto the lower ones. This reduces the force you need to put in
tailing. Most capstans on ships have a limit to the torque they can generate,
eit her because of the motor power if electric or steam, or a pressure relief
if hydraulic. The Land-Rover one has, as far as I can remember, a shear pin.
Rather terminal! One person wrote: "I did find it rather tricky to operate the
winch. It was very easy to melt the rope, easy to get one turn overrunning another
and virtually impossible to slip the rope on the capstan when loaded. All this
may well have been due to m y incompetence, so I dont know whether it is generic
to that kind of winch.
The rather flimsy nature of the engage mechanism on the Aeroparts winch was also a bit of a problem. All this led to some quite exciting moments, but that may not be what you had in mind :-)" Rope: If we're talking rope here, it must be said that if you use mm, then you are talking DIAMETER, but if you talk inches then it is CIRCUMFERENCE. So, a 3/4" rope will be rather small, about 6mm diameter actually, I think you meant a 2 1/4" rope. (I bet t he average 4x4 shop don't know this, but a ship's chandler will) In days of old when the UK was Imperial and Kings & Queens were allowed to Bonk who or whatever they wanted, rope was measured by it's circumference, not it's diameter, it's much easier now were metric.
HEMP / MANILA:- Since both these are made from natural materials, they tend to rot with age and their strength can be adversely affected with no visible signs of deterioration.
NYLON / Terilyne:- Good strength but too springy/elastic, the outer covering will melt due to friction on the drum.
Kevlar:- Excellent strength, no stretch, does have a synthetic outer so it will melt under heavy friction, when it snaps, it goes with a bang, suddenly.
Poly cotton/terilyne inner:- Like that used by Yachties for "sheets", High strength, low stretch, soft to handle, not cheap. Notes on rope: You need to buy yachting rope by the name of MARLOW BRAID. The rope must be 20mm thick. It costs a small fortune here in SA but it is worth it. If that rope is un available you need a 20mm fine braided POLYPROPELENE rope. The reason is that it has something like a 1% stretch index. DO NOT USE STRETCHY ROPE ! (Unless you want to kill yourself and destroy your vehicle) The Marlow braid has a breaking strain of 12 Metric Tonnes !, the Poly Prop rope has a BS of 6 Metric tonnes. The latter is also half the price of the Marlow.(Brian "I got one and won't sell it f or ...." Cotton South Africa) As far a rope...I'd suggest a dacron polyester rope designed as to be used as a sailboat halyard (Sampson makes a nice one). I use 9/16" that has >3% stretch at max load and a breaking strength of 9,000lb +, three times the capabilities of the winch. As there are many ship chandlers in the area, the price is reasonable, about $.70 to $.85/foot.
Aramid fibre rope is *much* stronger and *MUCH* more expensive. A goodly-sized snatch block makes self-recovery feasible.(Sandy Grice, Virginia) Notes: Never use wire on an ordinary capstan, wire should be greased to preserve it and it would not drive properly, it will not bend tightly enough if of large enough diameter for the capstan, the turns can bind or lock preventing you from releasing it, and it will quickly wear out the ridges on the drum. The main reason is safety, imagine a snapped cable with you standing in front holding the tail end!~@$%&* After a short while, wire will form into coils as it wraps round the drum, thus becoming awkward t o handle and sprigs of wire will break, shredding your hands in the process.
Also the friction of a rope round the drum is greater (3 turns) than you can get with wire, and far more handleable. BT & Elect. utilities only ever use rope (wire is strictly forbidden). BT cable pulling gangs use 16mm dia. poly covered kevlar stranded rope, SWL 3Tonnes, that should be enough for most people. You can notice that one of the Jolly Farmer types in the old Land-Rover sales video "Anything You Can Do" used the ca pstan winch with steel wire to winch small trees about. Hmmm! Chef "Head Wound Harry" Bligh of the Ottawa Valley club related one episode with a capstan winch he had. He parked the Rover near a fire and with a loop of rope 'round the bollard, the Rover happily turned a side of beef on a spit all day long. Try *that* with a Warn.
Contributors: Christopher.Hall@bbc.co.uk
Glen_Rees@PARLON2.CCMAIL.CompuServe.COM
Thanks to OVLRC-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Copyright Dixon Kenner, 1995.