A winch is excellent insurance against being stranded by yourself out in the bush. It doesn’t matter if
you’re the kind of 4WDer who actively seeks out the biggest bogholes and wildest hillclimbs, or if your
type of 4WDing is exploring and finding beaut new spots out on the bush – winches are a beaut bit of
backup that give you the confidence to have a look what’s around that next corner.

Having a winch and knowing how to use it, literally is the difference between being stuck for hours or
even days, and being able to recover yourself in 30min or less. It’s a great confidence booster, but did
you know that you should always, after every winch recovery, spool your winch rope right out and
neatly respool it back in again? Doing so ensures that you get the most life possible out of your electric
winch, and keeps it in good condition for next time you need to use it.

It’s almost never the case during a winch recovery, that you are able to winch perfectly forwards. More
often than not, you’ll be anchored to a tree or to another vehicle slightly off to one side. That’s perfectly
okay, and in fact winching at an angle of up to about 25° away from dead straight is perfectly fine. We
wouldn’t recommend winching at any more of an angle if you can help it, because you’ll end up placing
excess load on the winch and on the bullbar itself, introducing the potential for damage.

What happens naturally when you winch slightly off to one side, is your winch rope bunches up on that
side of the winch’s drum. If it’s a particularly big winch recovery, you might end up jamming all the
synthetic rope up around one side of the drum, making it extremely difficult to unspool again the next
time you want to use it. That next time could well be an emergency – like when the vehicle is stuck in a
bog hole and there’s water coming in the door seals. In that scenario you don’t want to have to muck
around trying to unspool a jammed winch rope, so it’s a much better idea to do it at the completion of
every winch recovery you do.

Start by unspooling the winch rope out as far as you need to until there’s only neatly-wrapped spools
left on the drum. Then, wearing a pair of heavy-duty recovery gloves, spool the winch rope back in. Use
one hand to keep a bit of tension on the winch rope, at the same time guiding it back and forwards
across the drum so it spools in neatly. It’ll only need a little bit of guiding, as it will mainly feed itself back
and forward across the drum.

It’s important to keep tension on the rope as you spool in your winch. It doesn’t have to be heaps of
tension, but just enough so that the winch rope wraps neatly. If you try and spool it in without holding
tension against the rope, it’s likely that it will wrap around on itself and jam instead of neatly wrapping
around the drum. Then, when you go to unspool it next time, all of a sudden it will stop winding out and
instantly start winding in. If this occurs, the solution is to find the spot where it has jammed on itself,
and use a bit of muscle to manually pull the winch rope out from under itself. In extreme cases you may
need to even at this stage connect the winch rope to a tree trunk protector around a tree, and gently
reverse to tug the rope free.

Synthetic winch rope is brilliant because it is so easy to handle. Wire winch cable is a thing of the past,
and in fact all 4WD Supacentre winches now come with synthetic winch rope. It’s good strong stuff
that’s made for 4WD winch recoveries, but it does need just a little bit of caring for to ensure it’ll be
ready for the next time you need it. With just a little bit of care and thought, your winch will last you for
years to come!