I'm a relatively new dozer owner. I've got a Case 550E. I plan on a good bit of woods work, and think I'd like to have a winch. Do I have to find a winch specifically designed for my machine, or can I buy a generic winch and adapt it to my machine? What size winch do I want for a 14,000 lb machine? Thanks, Greg
When you say you are planning on a good piece of woods work to you mean skidding wood or do you planning on working in the swamps and getting stuck a lot. If planning on skidding My recommendation would be to look for a salvage winch off of a log skidder and build a mount for it provided you have a PTO on your machine. On most of them the input shaft turns all the time and have a brake fluid type controller to pull and release with free spool. If you want to self extract from your favorite low spot I would look for a conventual crawler winch. They have lower gearing and more suited to dragging you out of the muck but they are typically a bear to do any logging with. Good luck.
I'm more worried about getting stuck. I'll be a long way from help. I've got a tractor mounted PTO logging winch for pulling trees, but I'm pretty sure it's not going to be enough to help "unstick" a stuck dozer. Thanks, Greg
first rule of winchs; find one that actually came off the same machine as you want to fit it onto ! Certain models of winchs; ie Hyster W6F was fitted to a lot of different crawlers. BUT each winch had different design changes like pto shaft location/length/spline coupler etc to suit what its being fitted too. Get one that came off a case 550 or similar size case that is definetly know to fit. Hydraulic winchs can be abit more forgiving to fit that pto winchs. They only need adapter plates to fit the winch to the tractor; plus a adequate hydraulic system to supply what the winch needs. Which is not neccesarily what the tractor can supply either. A heap of common sense when using winchs too, know its limitations, plus the tractors and your own as well as the CABLES limitations. Wire rope can will and does break. Have seen it cut trees in half, and there just a 'wee' bit more solid that flesh and bone.
Yair . . . I would second every word of Merv's , particularly the safety angle . . . most folks just don't understand what can happen when a D8 starts sucking and its anchored in behind a decent stump. Cheers.
Aye scrub. have seen and heard and made 7/8 rope 'singing' like a violin. And when you break it you get to splice a new eye in it too !! piece of cake for the gun guys, I get there but takes me abit of time and sweat and is never as neat as the gun logging guys. And as for 1 and 1/8 rope on D8s etc id much much rather find some other task to do !
Yair . . . LOL. I know the feeling Merv . Quite by chance I am down on the Gold Coast where I spent a lot of time nursemaiding a bunch of 627's and green lizards carving out canals . . . D7 with a bodgied on Garwood on one job and a nice Hyster on the D8 on t'other. I'm afraid I never mastered proper splicing but got pretty good at the "five minute" variety with a long tail and a couple of cable clamps. Cheers.
Was always told 50% of the strength was in a married eye and the tucks the rest. So I always had a long eye and a long tail for tucking. But even a tail wound back into a rope without clamps can be surprisingly strong and more so with 2/3 clamps. I always did 3 tucks per strand on the first or easier side. Then 2 on the next set of strands and pulled the core through with the last strand.
Yair . . . Merv . You mean where you divide the wires, form a loop and wind them back into themselves? . . . that's what I called the "five minute splice". Depending where you come from and who you are working with I've heard it called the "Kiwi splice", the "Pommy splice" and so on . . . and you are right it holds surprisingly well. We used it with a long tail to put in eyes when scrub pulling with two inch cable and they never pulled out with a couple of twenty ones bouncing on the ends. Cheers.
Aye. Same thing scrub. Used to call them maori eyes, but married or Flemish ????? eye could be right terminology. As for 2 inch rope is all you could do with them. Once when I broke a rope did a maori eye with a long tail then just did a simple knot to lock on the tail and pulled for all tractor was worth. Did the job. How did your scrub clearing go with wire rope compared to anchor chain ???
Yair . . . Merv . With respect to the original poster we are swell and truly off topic. (big grin) I'll start another thread on ropes and chains and balls and such . . . it may be of interest. Cheers.
Buddy put this semi in the ditch once. Wrecker arrived, hooked up his line and started tightening. It was pitch black at night and you could actually see sparks coming off of the line! I took a few steps backwards! Andrew