I'm asking, because I have a Marlin Crawler bumper, and Marlin states only hawse fairleads are to be used because of the build of their bumpers. Plus, it doesn't look like the traditional roller fairleads would fit anyway, since the area is quite small.

I'm been looking at winches lately, but I know that I won't be able to afford synthetic line/a synthetic line-equipped winch.

Would the steel cable just eat through the aluminum, or would I be fine? Would I need to change out the fairlead more often? Would it cause the steel cable bind?

 

Should be OK, the steel line will chew into the aluminum if you do any hard side pulls. Big gotcha is if you do switch to synthetic, you'll need a new fair lead as any sharp cuts in the alum. will damage the synthetic line. But it is like when I bought a UHMW fair lead to use with my synthetic line, the shop did inform me that the plastic fair lead is a wear item and it will wear out. Same with aluminum and steel. You are basically trading off wear out a less expensive fair lead instead of the more expensive winch rope.

 

Thanks for the quick reply, 4Crawler.

I was expecting that the aluminum would probably need increased replacement intervals, seeing as the steel cable is not exactly smooth. And I would love to have synthetic line, but man is that stuff expensive!

 

Or you can get a steel hawse like the one that came with my Superwinch... Warn sells one they call their standard and Superwinch sells one for the LT series...

 

I was inches away from buying this - it's the best deal for synthetic line I could find:
http://www.amazon.com/Smittybilt-982.../dp/B003CGBN3C

It comes with an aluminum hawse fairlead anyway.

I ended up getting a great deal on a Warn, so I went that way.