Winch ring, What's your experience with them? Is it worth it?

Forum > Product Review

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24 Aug 2020

Winch ring is an innovative product which has become very popular among the 4wd community. Have you ever used a Winch Ring? Is it worth it? If yes, can you share your experience with us? We'd love to hear.




John (johnp)
24 Aug 2020

Seeing the results of a strain/load testing comparison, I won't be buying any. The additional load on the winch is just too much.

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Pexandra (Pexandra)
24 Aug 2020

Winch rings need to be sued with soft shackles. Soft shackles are not rated and they degrade rapidly with use - plenty of experience. For example a 14,000 kg soft shackle will break at around 14,000 kg when brand new and used around a large diameter restraint. Typical recovery points are sharp/small radius so a 14 T tonne soft shackle will be severely damaged and it does not take too many used and the residual strength is compromised. A rated steel grade S shackle, say 4.75 T is rated to not break at less than 6 times the nameplate rating or 8.5 Tonnes - and it will do this for a lifetime.
So the question you need to ask yourself it are you relying on the shackle to not break? will you roll backwards down the hill, roll the car, ... if it breaks. If so then don't use either soft shackles or rings.
To be rated a shackle needs to be designed, manufactured, tested (& documented) to a peer reviewed standard. There is no such standard for soft shackles and if you have ever pulled one to destruction they fail easily - good for pulling yourself out of bogs, or for the comp guys.
As the per the previous post an awful lot of energy is required to overcome the friction in a snatch ring - this means that the winch, attachment points, extension straps, etc are all more heavily loaded leading to greater risk.
Both snatch rings and soft shackles are incredibly expensive. Soft shackles are not much lighter than rated shackles and a 2 T rated shackle is about the same strength (*Minimum 12 T) as a brand new soft shackle and it is lighter! Snatch rings are a lot lighter than conventional snatch blocks although there are now some very light blocks on the market for use with dyneema type ropes where the minimum bend radius is very much smaller than for steel ropes.

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Chris (FJ)
24 Aug 2020

Message deleted by the author.

can't help, I brought an ex-police Pajero with a winch (wire) I have never had to use :)

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I have to agree with Peter Stecher. I am an old man with old man ideas. I run a Toyota Troop Carrier fully loaded with all possible requirements for emergencies. I have bogged myself many times both in sand and swamp. My 9000kg winch with Dynamee complete with snatch pulleys have so far got me out of situations relatively easy. Only major problems were finding anchor sites.
These new gismo's such as Soft Shackles and now Winch Rings might be good for TV actors that are paid to sell but the old fashioned products worked then and still do now. As the saying goes. If it ain't broke don't fix it.

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Matthew
Matthew (discomatt)
25 Aug 2020

Like so much of the 4wd industry it is just another pointless money spinner and a gimmick designed to sell another item to a sucker IMO

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Chris
Chris (TowieHD)
27 Aug 2020

I think the winch ring is a very innovative product that has great potential in the future. Having said that, unfortunately in it's current configuration it's not a product I would use on a daily basis in my profession or personally when I'm out with the family

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