Over the past several days, I've been servicing most of the remaining winches on my boat (I have one left to do). You might recall from this post, I ran across some interesting things while cleaning and servicing that winch.
Well, the similar bad servicing was found on the other winches as well. I spent on average about 4 hours per winch disassembling and cleaning the assemblies. Most of the problems have come from the fact that there was way too much grease used in the assembly. This was compounded by the fact that the winches had apparently not been serviced in quite a while so some of the grease dried.
In the first winch, the dried grease glued in the collets so it was almost impossible to disassemble the winch without destroying the collets. The next two winches came apart easier, the only problems encountered there were that dried grease in the teeth off the gears took a lot of work to clean out. The following winch, the one I just finished and prompted this post, demonstrated yet another problem with failing to regularly and properly service a winch.
On this winch, the collets came out ok...well, they were gooey but they came out. The problem was that the main spindle wouldn't slide out of the winch housing like it should. I could pull it up maybe an eighth of an inch and then it would stop. I tried using a locking winch handle to pull it up but it wouldn't budge. Even banging on the handle with my hand wouldn't budge the spindle.
Given my recent experience with cleaning all the dried grease out of the other winches, I immediately grabbed some spray solvent and worked it into the mechanism. After 30 minutes or so, I was finally able to free the spindle. A few hours cleaning gobs of grease out of the mechanisms (sometimes using a pick to chip the dried grease out) and the winch is finally cleaned. Assembled correctly according to the Lewmar instructions, and the winch now has much less drag and seems to be working much better.
So, do me a favor. If you have a winch and can't remember when you last serviced it, please go do it. The sanity you save may be your own. If you aren't sure how to service your winch, there seem to be a number of videos available on Youtube to help.
Showing posts with label winches. Show all posts
Showing posts with label winches. Show all posts
Friday, March 28, 2014
Tuesday, February 25, 2014
A Winch is not a Wheel Bearing
While freeing the motor from the dinghy, one thing I found was that the winch at the rear of the boat needed to be serviced. It sounded OK, clicking and spinning as it was supposed to, but started complaining (squeaking) when under the load of the davit system. So, what do you do when you need to do something and don't know how...consult The Oracle naturally. A brief search found the following YouTube video on the subject.
Seems straight forward enough. The cap was a little tighter than hand tight but came off with a bit of persuasion. After removing the caps I tried to remove the collets. Note how easily they are removed in the video...well, this winch doesn't appear to have been serviced in a while and the collets were stuck. I couldn't even pull them out with pliers (something you should avoid doing with softer metals unless absolutely necessary). I applied some penetrating oil and let it sit...for a day.
The next day I came back and the collets still would not budge. A far cry from what you see in the above video. I guess servicing a brand new winch on a table isn't the same as servicing a well used, and probably abused, winch on a boat. I didn't find much information on sticking collets, so I guess this isn't a common occurrence. In any case, I need to get this thing apart to either service it or replace it so these collets will have to come out one way or another. In the end, I used a heat gun and vice grips and were finally able to get them out without too much damage to the collets.
From what I can tell, it appeared that dried grease was the reason that the collets were stuck. As I disassembled the rest of the winch, I found the parts to be just as in the above video, but in my case most were caked with grease. Some older and dried and some that was in better shape. But, if you watch the video above you will note that they say "lightly" oil and "lightly" grease...but this winch was treated more like a wheel bearing that was packed with grease.
It took me 4 hours and copious amounts of solvent (most of my supply) to clean all the grease off of the gears and other parts (next time I'll just use diesel). It was a real pain to get this winch clean. The picture below doesn't really do it justice, I should have pulled the gear stack on the right apart so you could see the gobs of grease caked inside and surrounding the pawls.
After the thorough cleaning, I lightly greased and lightly oiled as it showed in the video (ok, I put a little bit more on than the video shows...but just barely coating surfaces) and reassembled the winch. Since I didn't have spare collets, I used some jewelers diamond files to file off the burs made in the collets by the vice grips. Everything went together just fine.
The real test was to winch the dinghy back up and, other than the broken stripper ring I still need to order (so for now this winch's self-tailing feature shouldn't be used), it worked flawlessly. It raised the dinghy without complaint and sounded like a happy winch. Going to have to do this to the rest of the winches, I do hope that the rest are not packed in grease...but I guess I better go pick up some diesel to use as solvent just in case.
Seems straight forward enough. The cap was a little tighter than hand tight but came off with a bit of persuasion. After removing the caps I tried to remove the collets. Note how easily they are removed in the video...well, this winch doesn't appear to have been serviced in a while and the collets were stuck. I couldn't even pull them out with pliers (something you should avoid doing with softer metals unless absolutely necessary). I applied some penetrating oil and let it sit...for a day.
The next day I came back and the collets still would not budge. A far cry from what you see in the above video. I guess servicing a brand new winch on a table isn't the same as servicing a well used, and probably abused, winch on a boat. I didn't find much information on sticking collets, so I guess this isn't a common occurrence. In any case, I need to get this thing apart to either service it or replace it so these collets will have to come out one way or another. In the end, I used a heat gun and vice grips and were finally able to get them out without too much damage to the collets.
From what I can tell, it appeared that dried grease was the reason that the collets were stuck. As I disassembled the rest of the winch, I found the parts to be just as in the above video, but in my case most were caked with grease. Some older and dried and some that was in better shape. But, if you watch the video above you will note that they say "lightly" oil and "lightly" grease...but this winch was treated more like a wheel bearing that was packed with grease.
It took me 4 hours and copious amounts of solvent (most of my supply) to clean all the grease off of the gears and other parts (next time I'll just use diesel). It was a real pain to get this winch clean. The picture below doesn't really do it justice, I should have pulled the gear stack on the right apart so you could see the gobs of grease caked inside and surrounding the pawls.
 |
| Clean on the left, dirty on the right. |
The real test was to winch the dinghy back up and, other than the broken stripper ring I still need to order (so for now this winch's self-tailing feature shouldn't be used), it worked flawlessly. It raised the dinghy without complaint and sounded like a happy winch. Going to have to do this to the rest of the winches, I do hope that the rest are not packed in grease...but I guess I better go pick up some diesel to use as solvent just in case.
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