Wire vs synthetic rope; hangar doors

[Let'sgoflying!]

My homemade hangar door uses four 1/4” steel wire ropes to lift it.
I have replaced some of these b/c they wear at a tight bend where they are attached to the ‘roller’.

I use a synthetic rope to winch my plane in, and it’s worked amazingly well.

I was wondering about using this UHMWPE rope on the hangar door.

Any thoughts?

 

[Dana]

Synthetic rope will stretch, and it's not very abrasion resistant.

 

[Anthem]

most of the top (certainly schweiss) have all gone to straps. So instead of the 1/4" wire cable, they just use 3" straps I think (strap size depends on the size of the door is my guess). You might want to look in to that, but you'd probably have to change out the rollers, etc.

If you are staying with rope, I wonder how sailing rope would work. Dyneema is stronger than steel is what the sailors tell me - but I dont know the stretch and what ever other properties of it.

 

[Albany Tom]

Do you mean at the attachment end, and does it have a thimble? Or at a pulley? A wire rope setup should last a really long time, like forever for a garage door. Sometimes the pulleys are too small and that causes the cable to wear prematurely. For 1/4" cable I believe you want more than 5 or 6" diameter. Also, fwiw, I don't think UHMWPE is very knot friendly, and I believe all the synthetics suffer from creep.

 

[Capt. Geoffrey Thorpe]

FWIW department: There is a bit of a trend to replace stainless wire with UHMWPE for standing rigging on sailboats.
Of course, it's been very popular for running rigging for a while.