Bedding your winch rope

[Mc4by]

What is the best way to bed in dyneema rope on your winch?
I pulled my daughters small 4 cylinder car along a flat car park. Is that enough or should I be hauling something a bit heavier before I use it for the patrol?

[the evil twin]

The more load the better really... but... having said that...
Under minimal load, a layer snug and parallel then a layer with an aggressive 'criss cross' also works.

The objective is to stop the rope sinking in thru the lower layers when winching under high load.
That is more prone to happen the looser the lower layers are wound and a 'criss cross' will stop that.
Only downside is that some winches are loaded to the max and you may not have the space.

I load mine on by winching my truck along teh drive with the park brake slightly applied.

That last layer doesn't matter as much as that is usually deployed so often doesn't need to wind back on under load

[MB]

Great advice, Cheers ET!
Rope on my winch is quite new to me. @MudRunnerTD did recently help greatly on a snow trip where I came adrift alone as last car. Upon re-spooling kindly showed me the 'final layers'- 'criss/cross' method you both kindly mention. Old cable days would have never dared but truly works fast on this new great stuff ;-)

[MudRunnerTD]

Yeah criss cross for the win works a treat. I do 1 layer then s couple of crossed then another layer.

[Mc4by]

To get the criss cross do you just steer left and right?
I wouldn't want to be trying to pull it by hand under load.

[the evil twin]

To get the criss cross do you just steer left and right?
I wouldn't want to be trying to pull it by hand under load.

If you use the "criss cross" then you don't need very much load at all and a human guiding the rope side to side.
Use gloves and keep a 1/2 metre or so from the winch hawse, another way is use a broom handle, shovel or whatever or a Shackle.
Put the line thru the shackle so it is totally free and just pull the shackle side to side as you winch in.

My drive is level so I do it by myself after washing the rope or whatever by applying the park brake just a tad and use my remote in one hand and guide the line with the other

[MudRunnerTD]

With Rope you don't really need to load the winch like steel rope. Steel rope had terrible memory issues so keeping load on it will spool well. Rope will just load as you lay it.

When you finish a winch recovery you will almost certainly need to re-spool as it will likely be bunched to one side.
Just freespool out untill it's neat and unaffected by the recovery and re-spool by hand using criss cross method