I am thinking of changing to a synthetic winch line, but my winch is buried in my bumper.
I can pull off the fairlead and see the drum in there... will that be enough to change the line? I am not familiar with how the line is attached to the drum.
I'm hoping its just a lug at the end held on with a bolt, then I can reach in with a nut-driver and get it?

 

That said, I changed the line on my Warn Ti to synthetic when it was mounted in a bumper (Mopar off rroad) so only partially embedded. On mine the steel line was secured to the drum at the end by a small hex headed screw which just passed through a tab on the end of the line and into a threaded hole in the drum.

It's going to be a bit tricky to do if you can't change the rope with the winch mounted in the bumper and it will be difficult to access through the fairlead slot. Often the securing point of the line is at one end or other of the drum and not in line wiht the fairlead slot.

If you have a little access from the top of the winch and can see the drum I'd have thought it should be possible. If not you're looking at partially unmounting the winch (and presumably leaving it powered up) so you can wind the old line off and the new line on ??

Steve

 

The winch is a Mile Marker 9500si.
The design of the winch allows no way for me to access the drum through the top of the winch.
It is installed in an AEV bumper... if I take the fairlead off there is a pretty decent window to the coils/drum, so if it's attached like you describe I think I'd be in good shape.
If I have to start trying to work around corners or something though, that's gonna get tricky.