Warn aluminum fairleads
- Thread starter mrblaine
- Start date
You see the same pictures I see and we see smatterings of a similar issue with the F55 large radius fairlead. I never see the same melted build up with smaller radius fairleads and some of them are so small that I would never use them. Observation is just that and while not a great way to determine causation, we have to start somewhere.
I wasn't a witness to the pull. I was told it was attached to the rig in front of the recovered rig on a local trail. Given where the line parted, it was sub 20 feet away and not a long pull.
At some point we have to balance the mass of this much larger fairlead against the much less mass of a typical version with a small radius and come to some sort of a conclusion about which one takes longer to heat up enough to melt line. Everything is in favor of the Warn not having those issues and yet, here we are and it is very common.
The "fairlead" I've been running for a few years, I've not seen any buildup. I've done my fair share of winching others with it. I'm posting to show for radius comparison.
- T6 Aircraft-Grade Aluminum
- Type III Mil Spec Anodized Hard Coat Finish
I'm flip flopping here, but thinking about it some more, I think the area under the curve @sab +posted HAS to be the same in both scenarios...thinking in terms of a free body diagram, if the summation of force against the fairlead is greater, then the line tension would have to be greater to result in a force balance, right? So for pulls with identical pull force then the sum of the Fn should be the same regardless of radius, and the peak Fn would vary based on how much area the force is distributed to.
Rope tension and this sort of stuff is definitely not my wheelhouse and though I definitely knew how to do it 20 years ago, I've been focused on fluids and thermo ever since and in stuff like this I have to go back to the most basic Physics 1 fundamentals.
@sab tell me why I'm wrong. I may be oversimplifying something or just dead wrong and I'm admittedly leaning more on intuition than analysis with this comparison but if there's a rope under tension around a pole and I have the misfortune of my fingers ending up caught in it, I think I'd have better odds with the 3' pole than the 1", right?
I'm also interested in the plastic/powdercoat theory. I believe WRG fairleads are anodized, yes? Are most polished aluminum fairleads clear powdered or is this somewhat unique to Warn in an effort to establish aesthetic longevity vs bare aluminum?
Yes, UV stable black hard anodizing.
The Warn is not coated with anything.
Uncoated = corrosion, starting at the microscopic level. Wonder if that is causing enough friction, blah, blah...
ah, ok when I first read the plastic thing brought up I thought you were implying it was clear powdercoated. I re-read some posts and I'm up to speed now that it may be porosity catching bits of rope due to being polished cast instead of billet.
FYI, those don't work on shiny metal. Have to put down some paint or tape to get a reading.
Melty bits are typical in any dyneema break even with a straight-line pull with 0 contact, just from internal rope friction.
If the emissivity can be adjusted, it can be used on many surface finishes.
This is getting tiresome. They are not coated with anything that visibly shows wear when the line is rubbed against the aluminum fairlead. I do not know if that means they are not coated with something.
And all those melty bits transported themselves back to the corner of the fairlead and stacked themselves up so it looks like they were not part of melty bits that happen during a break. Got it.
My Warn fairlead did exactly the same thing. There is some kind of coat over the aluminum. I removed a lot of it with an angle grinder to get down to bare aluminum. Then I got rid of it.
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