Tech Tip - Splice a Broken Winch Line
<hr style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);" size="1"> <!-- / icon and title --> <!-- message --> There are tons of advantages to switching to synthetic winch lines on your ATVs. Lighter weight, safer pulls, and best of all, instant repairs if you have a failure of your line while doing a pull. If you are caught with a broken line during a pull you can splice it back together in no time and be winching in 15 minutes or less and heres how.
All you need is a few simple tools and a couple sets of instructions in your toolkit.
Tools:
Sharp Scissors, or Blade
Electrical Tape
Sharpie Marker
Tubular Rope Fid about 1/2 the diameter of your rope line and at least 4-6 inches long (I used a cotter pin in this example)
Formal Instructions:
Eye Splice
End Splice
First you need to make two marks on your rope. Draw a line at one fid length from the end, and another at two fid lengths from the end of the rope. A fid length is 21 times the diameter of the rope. I'm using 1/4" rope, so 21 x 1/4 = 5 1/4. So I made marks at 5 1/4 and 10 1/2 inches fromt he end of the rope.
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Now take your thimble, and temporarily wrap your rope around it, lining up one end of the thimble with your 2nd mark. Where the rope comes out the other end of the thimble, draw a 3rd mark.
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Set the thimble aside for now, we need to make the end of the rope smaller. Starting at your first line (and going towards the end of the rope), mark every other pair of strands, until you have marked three pairs.
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Now cut each strand that you marked, and pull the cut ends out of the end of the rope.
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The end of your rope should now have only six strands, instead of twelve. Remove the tape (since it will now be loose) and retape the end of the rope. At this point you should also tape something onto the end of the rope to help you push it through. I used a large cotter pin this time, and it worked great.
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Now spread the strands of rope apart at your third mark, and insert the end of your rope down the center of the winch line.
You now have a very large loop in the end of your rope. Push the end of the rope up through the middle of the rope. You'll need to kind of "bunch up" the rope to loosen it up enough to push the other rope through the middle. As you bury more and more or the end of the rope, the loop will get smaller and smaller. Soon it will be small enough that you can insert your thimble in the loop. Eventually you will have the loop very tight around the thimble. Pull the end of the rope out so you can pull it nice and tight around the thimble. Remove whatever object you taped to the end of the rope to guide it through, and pull the rope tight to re-bury the end. You may have to cut a little off the very end of the rope to get it all to re-bury itself. At this point your second and third marks should be at the ends of the thimble, and you have a completed eye splice.
The end splice is exactly the same except that you now have to create two tapered tails and bury each tail into the two sections of winch line to create the splice.
With a little patience you can repair any line in minutes.
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