Pics When good winches go bad (DIY GRCS)

[TimberMcPherson]

My home made capstan winch/brake after doing many a fine dismantling mission, finally just had enough. I was up in a 120 foot pine trying to lift an incredibly ugly big out of a very ugly position. It was being loaded up using a strongarm and about 50kgs of force (according to my groundy) when it slipped a bit then locked up. I came down and saw little bits of metal coming out the bottom of it and knew it was bad. Could have failed at much much much worse times. I raced home and grabbed another winch from home and only lost a half hour off the job.

The winch was a Barient 24-45, self tailer, its not got the power of a 45 harken. The whole unit including making the base owed me $400 I think and has been a great tool. I wasnt pleased about breaking it but you have to remember how many great times you had with the old dog rather than the fact you just backed over it.

Im not sure if the winch had been damaged prior to it getting wrecked but its very possible, its been an abused workhorse for the last 4 or 5 years. I have serviced it a couple times, but in the back of my mind I knew it wasnt as good a unit as the hharken and wondered what kind of limits it had.

I have ordered a new Lewmar 45st to replace it.

So my lessons in this are

Dont use a strong arm
Make sure nobodys shockloading it
Stick to quality winches.

In the picks you can see the inside of the drum, teeth are torn off and/or bent. one of the drive sprockets has a tooth broken to

 

[treemandan]

Its interesting to see, thanks for posting.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

It's been a while since I did PM's on The Winch, but i do not recall the gear-train being brass. Could that have something to do with it?

 

[treemandan]

It's been a while since I did PM's on The Winch, but i do not recall the gear-train being brass. Could that have something to do with it?

That was one thing I found intersting as I never saw planetaries made of brass. I guess they don't require lube.

 

[Blakesmaster]

When I pulled mine apart the gears were brass.

 

[Blakesmaster]

Looks like brass here.

GRCS Lowering Device Disassembly from baileysonline.com - YouTube

 

[Blakesmaster]

He described the casing as aluminum/bronze alloy though, so maybe the gears are made of that as well. Not sure really.

 

[TimberMcPherson]

I called my local provedor and they could get me a Harken in 8 weeks or the equivalent lewmar overnight. The specs and quality are the same and because I have some mission on I ordered the Lewmar.

Now the Lewmar is an excellent winch, I got the new one sat morning and its great quality.

BUT

On capstan winches the drum is generally secured by either some sort of circlip or a threaded mechanism such as a bolt that fits down through the winches drive socket (as the harken or bariant winches have) or in the lewmars case, a sort of threaded plastic cap.

My concern is that the threaded cap is right in the line of fire when it comes to treework from falling debris, swinging loads etc. If it gets broken, there is NOTHING holding that drum down. I have had a Barlow winch bust its circlip and nearly come apart on me mid load and that was quite exciting enough.

So the Lewmar is going back and I am going to have the big wait on the harken dammit. Its a little thing, and in all likelyhood there would never be a problem, but theres that slim chance and we are in a game that is incredibly cruel to the unlucky.

So lewmar vs Harken, harken wins this round.

 

[TimberMcPherson]

I should add an important note for those thinking of making there own winch system.

Winches are designed to take a load at 90 degrees from the drum. The rope must be guided so it does not put any lifting force on the drum that would cause it to put pressure on the mechanism that locks the drum down to its base as no winch is made to have to handle great pressure from this direction. So from the load or top side where the rope is guided to the drum, it must run at 90 degrees to the drums axis at the lowest point of the friction area of the drum.

Confused? Good.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

I should add an important note for those thinking of making there own winch system.

Winches are designed to take a load at 90 degrees from the drum. The rope must be guided so it does not put any lifting force on the drum that would cause it to put pressure on the mechanism that locks the drum down to its base as no winch is made to have to handle great pressure from this direction. So from the load or top side where the rope is guided to the drum, it must run at 90 degrees to the drums axis at the lowest point of the friction area of the drum.

Confused? Good.

Which is why the GRCS has a fair lead over the top right side of the capstan.

 

[TimberMcPherson]

Which is why the GRCS has a fair lead over the top right side of the capstan.

Exactly, on my mark 1 version the fairlead sat to high, that caused the rope loading to "pull" at the winch and caused a failure when the circlip under a pushing twisting pressure was wound off.

 

[John Paul Sanborn]

Exactly, on my mark 1 version the fairlead sat to high, that caused the rope loading to "pull" at the winch and caused a failure when the circlip under a pushing twisting pressure was wound off.

Good took around five years to get the GRCS to where he was comfortable putting it on the market. He has a background in mechanical design and is very intuitive with the mechanics. The fair leads should just keep the rope running true into the bollard. They should not be used for redirect purposes, any redirecting should be separate from The Winch, designed to take any side loading off the bracket.