"Brake-Off" Feature Provides Important Customer Benefits

One of the really great features about the Allied towing winch is also somewhat unknown and often little understood. The "brake-off" feature, also called "half-brake," keeps the cable tight yet allows it to be pulled off with a load.

In brake-off, it is impossible to pull out any cable by hand. But with a towed load, the cable will play out while it retains its tension.

What makes brake-off special is that it allows the user to pull loads across difficult terrain more easily and efficiently. A typical situation is pulling a large load across a muddy area. The operator knows that he can traverse the area with the tractor, but may not be able to get across while dragging the load. As the operator approaches the muddy area, he moves the winch control lever to the brake-off position. The tractor proceeds across the mud, but the load stays behind. Once the tractor reaches more favorable ground, the operator winches in the load, moving ahead the whole time.

The other big advantage of brake-off is that the cable always stays in tension, which helps the cable to spool onto the drum more uniformly. This reduces the tendency of the cable to "bird-nest," and leads to longer cable life.

Single-lever control makes this process easy. The operator pushes the handlever away from himself as far as it will travel, into a detented position. The lever will remain there until the operator pulls it back to another position.

The customer benefit is productivity. Sure, the operator could accomplish the same thing without brake-off, but he would have to stop once to release the load and stop a second time to bring up the cable in a controlled fashion. Brake-off keeps things rolling.

Don't confuse brake-off with freespool. In freespool, the winch drum is completely uncoupled from the winch drive mechanism, and can turn freely. This allows the operator to pull cable off by hand. In brake-off, there is no way to pull off any cable with human force.

Operators who learn how to take advantage of brake-off find that it is an essential feature. Be sure that your new customers know about this feature. Brake-off is a standard feature on all Allied towing winches for crawler tractors.
This feature is very desirable for skidder winches also. Shortly after Allied acquired the W400 skidder winch from Lufkin, we added an optional brake-off feature, to provide greater value for the customer.