Servicing the winch - part one
Alison has four winches. Two are very old (original?) and are attached to the mast. The other two are relatively modern Antal W40 two-speed self-tailing winches that are fitted on top of the cockpit coaming. As I was preparing her for sailing I noticed that the port winch was very stiff. A quick bit of googling revealed that you're supposed to service winches twice a season and that it looks pretty simple to do.
As last Saturday was a bit too windy for a sail (well I was more worried about getting out of the harbour short-handed than the actual sailing) I decided to give it a go.
Winches are supposed to be pretty easy to disassemble and service and in practice this turned out to be the case with Alison's Antals. All you need is a flat-bladed screwdriver, a cross-head screwdriver and a couple of Allen keys and everything comes apart pretty easily. Inspecting the winch, all the grease looked pretty crusty so I spent a happy hour scraping the grease from the cogs and cleaning everything up as much as I could. I wiped all the bearing surfaces with a thin film of marine-specific winch grease and put everything back together. To my annoyance, the winch was exactly as tight as before!
During the week I hopped on Youtube to see if I could find any examples of winch maintenance to see if there was anything I was doing wrong. The first thing that I found was that the bearings and the pawls are supposed to be oiled, not greased so that probably contributes somewhat to the stiffness. The second thing I noticed was that whoever had previously serviced the winch last had put it back together wrong! The main body of the winch sits on two needle bearings that are separated by a spacer. My winch had the two bearings with the spacer on top!
Hopefully, if I can correct the two errors then the winch will run smooth and free. I'll let you know.
As last Saturday was a bit too windy for a sail (well I was more worried about getting out of the harbour short-handed than the actual sailing) I decided to give it a go.
Winches are supposed to be pretty easy to disassemble and service and in practice this turned out to be the case with Alison's Antals. All you need is a flat-bladed screwdriver, a cross-head screwdriver and a couple of Allen keys and everything comes apart pretty easily. Inspecting the winch, all the grease looked pretty crusty so I spent a happy hour scraping the grease from the cogs and cleaning everything up as much as I could. I wiped all the bearing surfaces with a thin film of marine-specific winch grease and put everything back together. To my annoyance, the winch was exactly as tight as before!
During the week I hopped on Youtube to see if I could find any examples of winch maintenance to see if there was anything I was doing wrong. The first thing that I found was that the bearings and the pawls are supposed to be oiled, not greased so that probably contributes somewhat to the stiffness. The second thing I noticed was that whoever had previously serviced the winch last had put it back together wrong! The main body of the winch sits on two needle bearings that are separated by a spacer. My winch had the two bearings with the spacer on top!
Hopefully, if I can correct the two errors then the winch will run smooth and free. I'll let you know.
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