Sahara Lee

1) What maintenance do you perform on a regular basis to make sure your winch will work when you need it?

2) What modifications have you made to your winch to make it last longer and improve reliability?

3) What products (oil, grease, UV protection) do you use on your winch and winch line to keep them like new.


The reason I ask is that I purchase a winch in April this year. My winch was kept outside and uncovered from late April until mid July when I began garaging my Jeep. That's less than 4 months. In that short time considerable corrosion developed in the motor. My winch, like most brands, has a Sanrong Electric (Chinese) motor. I know the motor is supposed to be rated IP54 (dust protected and splash proof) and not IP67 (dust proof and water proof to 1 meter for 30 minutes) but shouldn't it at least have a seal at the shaft and a drain hole to let water that does get in drain out?

While retentioning my cable this past Sunday my motor stopped working after winding in only about 5 feet. All 3 motor power terminals have 12.45 Volts while the ground has zero (ground goes directly to battery). Given that the motor is series type, this can only mean that the brushes, brush ground wire or armature has failed. I called the company I purchase the winch from and they shipped out a new motor (warranty no charge) which is arriving today.

What I'm really after here is, how do I make my cheapass winch last at least 10 years?

Pictures of corrosion found in motor follow:

nthinuf

Can't help with these questions, as my warn has been hanging off the front of my 4x4's, uncovered and with no maintenance at all, for 13 years and still works great.

But it is getting grungy and it's time to pull it off and clean it up, so I will be following this thread. Add more pics of the process if you have them.


In addition to dealing with a little rust and repainting, I was considering replacing the drum and converting to synthetic, but would be interested to see if anyone has had decent luck with just sanding it down to get rid of any burrs caused by long-term wire use.

Sahara Lee

The older Warn winches were lubed with AeroShell 17. That grease has been discontinued and replaced by AeroShell 33MS. The two greases are NOT compatible. The older grease was bentonite clay based and the newer is lithium complex based. You must clean out every bit of the old grease before going with the new.

Here's a grease compatibility chart:
Lubricants USA - Grease Compatibility Chart

The same caution goes whenever you put a grease gun to a zerk. Are you SURE the grease you are injecting is compatible with what's already in that bearing, spline or gear? If not you could be doing more harm than good.

As far as my own winch, my supplier says, "You can use any multi temperature, synthetic, wheel bearing grease, per the (their) engineer." I am using Valvoline VV985 SynPower synthetic lithium complex with molybdenum. Available at most local auto parts stores. http://www.valvoline.com/pdf/synpower_grease.pdf

sahara4me

I pulled mine apart just to be curious to see if water was in mine, this is what I found and it was still working! I just had respooled it a few days before.

Sahara Lee

OMG!

I'm amazed it still worked. Was that grease in there or just mud?

Eagle78

I keep a cover over mine ( love the naked look though) and yearly open & inspect!

Sent using my thumbs

sahara4me

That was pure mud, like dust and water turned to sludge. The end cap is supposedly "sealed", it does have orings on all the bolts that secure it but the inner lip seal is a paper gasket. That just isn't going to work. I'm going to warranty it out and i'll clear silicone up the seams of the cap on the new one and see how it does. It had been on a year now, never covered and its never been submerged..lots of mud and pressure washings tho..

Sahara Lee

As you can see in this picture of my new motor end, there is no seal on the shaft other than the "sealed" motor bearing. I loaded it up with grease and hope the grease doesn't leak into the motor.

Something else I noticed, it doesn't look like the brush assembly screws or stator screws are sealed. Maybe I should coat it all with bed-liner. Another interesting feature of my replacement motor is the threaded hole in the top near the brush end. My supplier sent me the motor for the remote solenoid model winch. My winch has the integral solenoid. Either that or it's a connection for a breather.

I'll stick a screw in it for now.

Sahara Lee

Unspooled/re-spooled my 100' 3/8" steel cable yesterday. This is something every manufacturer recommends you do before using your winch for the first time.

Steel cable preparation:
1) Unspool all but the last 5 turns around the drum.
2) Tie off to a large tree or other secure anchor just as you would in a real recovery.
3) Put about 500 pounds of tension on the cable.
4) Lube the entire cable with a light penetrating oil to help prevent rust and fraying. (cable rubbing on cable on the drum can contribute to fraying).
5) Rewind the cable on the drum while maintaining about 500 pounds of tension (I partially applied my parking brake but you can pull on a slight hill too).

Maybe someone could supply the same type of information for synthetic cable. I understand there is a special technique to spooling synthetic cable so it won't jam-up on the spool under load preventing you from unspooling when you need it.

I may switch to synthetic some day when they are better at handling the heat created by my winch's internal drum brake, UV exposure and protection from sand grains that can abrade from the inside out. Until then I'll stay with steel and be extra careful.

TreyJK

How long do most cables last if you take good care of them? And if they are subject to maybe one light recovery a month?