Roller Fairleads

I’m looking for a fairlead for my winch. I know very little about winches, but I’m assuming the fairlead opening should be about the width of the drum. The widest drum fairlead I’ve found is 12” and my drum is 14”. Assuming my assumptions are correct, does anything know of a wider fairlead for sale? I don’t want to make one from scratch, but I think I could take the one pictured below and make longer rollers top and bottom.

 

All three of my winches have 9” drums and came with fairleads that are about 7.5” wide. So I would think a 14” drum with a 12” fairlead is just about right.

I believe the fairlead needs to be at least slightly narrower than the drum so the cable doesn’t drag on the edge of the drum when winching.

 

I think I like the Ramsey design better, where the rollers overlap at the corners.

Even if you were to 'lengthen' the rollers, it wouldn't be much more work to build a fairlead from scratch. I've done it with heavy-wall tubing, with an ID nominally sized to fit over heavy bar.

 

Yup.
This was version 1:


Version 2 (for rope):




As noted in the above posts, the fairlead needs to be shorter than the width of the drum. If you are running rope on the winch, you want minimal clearance between the rollers at the corners. I left 0.020" on Version 2 but the jury is still out on whether or not the Delrin rollers will flex enough under load to cause contact. The shafts for Version 2 are 3/4" 4140 and I don't think those will flex much. I actually bent the bottom shaft on a Warn fairlead. Those appear to just be 5/8' cold rolled.

 

Yikes! That is a little pricey! The cheaper items my be imports that suffer in quality. I’ll have to dig deeper.

 

I’ll need to go steel as l plan to go cable and I doubt delrin will hold up. Your 4140 shafts are 3/4”…what diameter are the rollers?

 

Pays for its self the first time you need it.

 

1.750"

 

So, I picked this up from Amazon. It’s pretty junky, and way too narrow, but for $30 I thought it might be a test bed.

I’m going to cut the frame and weld in some angle top and bottom to widen it. I’ve got some 1.5” bar stock to make the new rollers.