While the winch is pulling, do you keep your tranny in gear and spin your wheels?

Lets make a hypothetical situation...Its a steep, mudy hillclimb and after several attempts to make it to the top, you cant get any closer than 50ft from the top. You slam on your parking brake while your spotter runs the winch line to the tree at the top. you already got the winch controller in your hand since you ran the remote into the cab before you hit the hill in anticipation of winching some of the way up. So you start the winch, it starts pulling you up.

So, while the winch is pulling you, do you help the winch by using your 4WD to take some load off the winch?

I have been told to let the winch do the work but ive seen several videos of folks winding a winch while powering the wheels.

The winch will be constantly running but the load is being applied (when the wheels arent moving you) and dropped (when the wheels have enough traction to move you)...is this bad for the winch in a significant way?

Thank you.

 

I've heard that you want to keep tension on the cable and not let it get slack for any reason. With that said, I don't think you'd want to try to crawl up the slope. You bought a 8000# winch and put it on a 4000# vehicle so that you'd have the capacity to pull it in those type of situations.

 

There are times when either scenario is plausible. Sometimes you are right on the verge of being able to get up something and all the winch is really doing is maintaining forward progress and keeping you from slipping back. That would have prevented Gene's flop last year. Other times, you are NOT going up under your own power and the winch needs to do the vast majority of the work.

If you are going to "help" the winch out, BE SURE that you do not shock load the cable. That means that if you are not making steady progress without repeatedly allowing slack in the winch cable, don't help.

 

 

A very good reason to go to a Synthetic winch rope, if you happen to get slack in the cable, just rewind it afterwards.