I wanted to get away from the conventional 'winch bumper' on the truck I'm not building.

As the front of the vehicle will be a 'blank canvas' I can please myself.

Design brief, strong enough for a twin motor 8274, lightweight and a fairlead which is kind to rope.

I came up with this, two 48mm dia tubes with c/bored inserts for cap head screws to suit long drum 8274 and a 48mm dia stainless steel fairlead
which we all know gives a 24mm radius for the rope to run round, this protrudes by 10mm from the steel tubes.



Proved a bit time consuming as i had to weld together 4 90 deg short radius chd 40 stainless elbows with some stainless tube.





Cut top and bottom to fit into steel tubes and weld.



The stainless is shot blasted as I can't get a decent finish graining or polishing it!

Now that's really rather nice

I had though of doing something similar, no way near as bling as that though, i was just going to use some off cuts from the cage tube.

Is it going to be water cooled again Paul ?
Mo

The thought did cross my mind what with it being tube and all!

After extensive calculation I have come to the conclusion that with the increased radius and so increased
contact area the heat buildup will be reduced by 62.443% and as such will not require additional cooling.

Nice.

Nice work Paul

Interested in your shot blasting not polishing the fairlead - I had a similar problem I got shot blasted by mistake - very harshly SA2.5 but managed to get to a satin finish using scotch bright and loads of elbo grease

Of course after a few uses the plasma polishes it anyway


Steve

I didn't know you could weld stainless to mild steel Did you use ordinary mild steel wire Paul?


Les.

Looks good Paul,

Its got to be better as a larger dia, much less stress on the fibres.Very similar to Mr Baskills new G

Cheers

Steveb

nice job


worked well for us last year

Stainless to mild is not a problem, I used stainless wire but you can use mild.
In an emergency I have used mild steel mig to repair stainless, tends to go a bit rusty though.

Love it Paul - quick Q: how did you clean up the weld on the inside of the curve (i.e. the two welds at either end on the centreline)?

Cheers, Al.

Al, I welded an elbow to each end of each tube, cleaned them up then welded the two halves together.
Cleaning up required a 4 1/2" sander, 1/2" belt sander, air die grinder and flapwheel and about 2 hours!

Ah! I see - yeah it was getting into the final welds that puzzled me, on the inside of the bends. Came out great though. Ta.

Al.

Nice, looks good, but you do know you can but stainless fairleads like that for £25!!

Ah but have you taken global warming trends into account? By the time you finish your build all of your calcs will be out by a good factor.

Very nice- sorry to say it...but it would have looked nicer polished

Anyone know of any commercially available fairleads that use this bigger radius? Seems daft for us all to be bending our plasma around such tight radii on hard side pulls cos they are the only ones anyone sells? I am sure that this is the main reason for me snapping my plasma- not necessarily breaking at the time but on a heavy pull later when the line breaks due to damage that has already been caused...

From where??

The guys who sell champion winches - i've got 2 of them, very cheap by comparison to other places and identical product. They are slightly smaller than the one Paul fabbed up, the bar is only approx 25mm dia, but its well made solid stuff!

It looks really great. Would have been good if it was all polished stainless.

It does remind me of a claymation mouth though.
Wallace.

These ones??

http://www.winchsolutions.co.uk/index.asp?...9-EFAF28F6B9AF}

Yup!

Must be a show price when they do them that cheap then, cos ive even got the reciepts here!!

That really is a lovely bit of fabrication, Polished or not

Matt2

I like that a lot, Paul. It ticks a lot of boxes even if it’s going to make your truck look like it’s got a trout pout.

I take it the not builds getting on quite well...