Okay boys and girls for today's lesson
we're gonna deal with
winches! I've been bad and I
haven't serviced my winches for over 18
months. I would suggest popping the tops
off and having a look and a little clean
and a wipe every thousand miles so I need
to service it. See what I find inside
because yeah said it's been 18 months
and done way too many miles on it but
when I did service it I did a full
strip down full clean and serviced them
the right way and we'll actually see how
that's held up over time. I was trying
out a new winch grease which I had not
used before so yeah let's have a look!
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If you're wondering okay I'm gonna do the
full service and all the rest and this
applies to any of the winches with us
Harken, Anderson whatever the only thing
that'll change is the methodology of
ripping it apart but the gears the
greases and the oils and the way that you
coat them and lubricate them and
everything is just the same for a
cruising boat it's different for the
racing boats but the way we grease and
oil them for a racing boat is different
because we want them to spin with a
minimum friction so we tend to use more
oils than greases and whereas here I tend
to use more greases than oils
because it sticks better but also we'll
have a look at some of the greases and
oils that I use because you can't just
use any old grease and oil and I'll show
you you can use like wheel bearing grease
if that's the only thing you've
got available to you but so don't
recommend it it turns to cack inside the
winch but anyway we'll have a look at how
disastrous mine are after leaving
them for too long and let's have a look
here's one of the five winches in
question it's an Anderson 46 not electric
nothing electric on our boat
original with the boat so these are 30
years old and I'd have to say quite
impressed the previous owner gave them
how would you say a really hard time the
strippers and the jaws were bent and
buckled and yeah inside was like
dealing with concrete rather than grease
nothing shy of horrendous anyway we're
gonna have a look at these ones after I'd
serviced them and now we're 18 months
in you can actually see some of the vice
marks from when I was trying to
strike everything else in the vice
let's see what it looks like there you go
looking pretty good looking really
good there's a little bit of water in
there because um because we had a bit of
a salty sail over here to be honest it's
really freaking good now one thing you
may notice here is that the winch is not
caked in grease all right that's a
very important factor all right there you
go is my winch grease a little bit
dirty but nothing to write home about
yeah actually super happy
quite impressed, that's really cool I was a little
bit worried that things would be
either a bit dry or a bit stuck up but
that grease is cool still quite greasy
alright we want to try and keep everything
as clean as possible including the boat
and me I'm wearing my good pants don't
tell Anna
that's where I'm gonna put
my dirty stuff take the bearing retaining
clip out and those looking good want to
oh yeah okay
there's a bit more grubby that's
seen a bit action but you know it's not
bad the input drive shaft not coming out is
a bit of a worry all right possibly a
little bit too greasy but it's paid off a
little bit for this not touching it for
18 months job uhoh! that's no bueno
knows okay so this retainer clip here is
actually broken off a little bit
that's a bugger because these are
actually quite hard to get and it's stuck
in here
come on!
there it is bugger now the input
shaft comes out quite nice cool
there it is. were you waiting for that one?
yep! so you know Shayne oh my god
I'll go put my working on boat pants on
Okay so I've changed my pants, can't get
in trouble now, see dirty pants.
Right, and a bench full of dirty parts
and a tower that needs some cleaning.
So let's get into cleaning it up and
lubing it up and getting it ready to
put back together. But let's have a look
at what I used last time, some of the
things. So I use this liqui moly marine
winch grease and I got it in Croatia by
the looks of it, Croatia or Greece. But
anyway, liquid moly
marine winch grease from
made in Germany, quite impressed, has done
very well to be honest, stayed quite
liquidy. It's a bit a little bit sticky,
so a little bit draggy, certainly as far
as a race winch grease is concerned it's a
bit draggy, but I'm
impressed with how long
it's sort of stuck together and kept
everything looking good.
Harken pawl oil, it's used on the pawls.
The pawls are those
little silver things. So I
actually put a very light smearing over
it all and then I put this in there as
well and this actually displaces the
grease a little bit and makes it all
click better and the grease still hangs
around to protect
everything from the wet.
This one, Harken white winch grease,
everyone probably knows this stuff. I'm
pretty sure it's just white grease
repackaged. So yeah, any marine white
grease is definitely better than this
stuff. Well even this stuff's better
because this is actually designed for
water, but a normal,
I call it opal grease
or blue grease or any wheel bearing
greases, they're
generally not that great.
I look totally waterproof, won't wash
out. So this is sort
of the next step up and
at pinch you'd probably use this if you
didn't have any of the others, you didn't
have any of those, you'd go to something
like this. Don't use,
here we go. This is a
white grease, a little bit better than
wheel bearing grease because it's
supposedly able to handle the water
better. But yeah,
this, no, definitely no.
Alright, I'm gonna do some part cleaning.
How much do you clean
the parts? You clean
them clean. Like if you give it a lick
with your tongue, that clean. When you've
got gears and things, you leave any of
this sort of black stuff around, it's
black because it's got dirt and grime and
all sorts of particles stuck in it.
If you leave it in there, that turns into
a grinding paste and when it's a grinding
paste, well you guessed it, it's gonna grind
stuff away and that's where you get all
your wear and tear from and that's why
the race winches, we service them
basically after every day because they're
spinning around a lot and really
fast. There's lots of little tiny
particles from the gears and salts and
pawls, shafts and bearings and everything
going around at a million miles an hour.
We need to get rid of all the particles
out of the grease and when the grease
goes in clean, it hasn't got those
particles so they don't wear out as
fast and they also spin more freely etc
etc etc. So yes, you can use solvents and
things to clean with and when I did the
first clean, I used petrol gasoline.
It's all I had, it's all that I had that
would remove the grease that was attached
to everything. It was so caked on and so
hard that it needed petrol to break it
down. You have degreases, that's great,
use those. Very pretty cleaned everything
and the grease I've used is actually
really good and it survived pretty well
so it looks like just using the the paper
towel for clean is going to be not
a drama at all.
There we go, we're in. Two pawls are in.
Now with the gear sets, the pawls you'll
see are up at the... so here's the
thickness of the gear
from the gear here to the top
here but the pawls only sort of take
two-thirds of that and there's no pawl
here. So what I tend to do is look for
where the pawl's been wearing on the
inside of this gear set and then actually
flip it over so it's got a new
surface to wear on and that tries to keep
all the wear a bit more evenly over
the gear. Every time you service it you
flip it over, keeps all the inside a
little bit more savvy for wear.
Gear oil.
Nice, nice, a little bit of
spooge for the gears themselves.
Right, so those two clusters are ready,
their pins are ready to
go. Lots of grease on my
fingers, so thrust washers going to get
some love. Things I noticed was this
thrust washer's got a groove in it but
that was actually
from the previous owner.
not putting it together properly. So,
it wore a groove in it but
it's on the underside so
not too stressed.
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Right, pin all nicely greased.
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And input shaft.
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Right, give the bearings a smooge.
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So, you can see just how much grease I'm
not putting on. There is literally just
enough grease to cover everything, to
make it just a little bit slippery and
greasy. Right, ready to
start putting stuff in the tower.
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Okay, time to put it
all back together now.
I find a quite useful to get your phone,
take a picture of
every step of you pulling
it apart. Makes a reverse assembly manual
when you go to put it back together.
Very, very, very helpful. Especially on
winches you're not
accustomed to dealing with.
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So, nice simple winches these.
to be completely honest all
winches are quite simple.
So, I'm just putting a small
smear over everything here.
It's just to keep it all nice and shiny.
Try and keep all the green
corrosion at bay a little bit.
Call me a bit funny for
wanting to keep my boat a bit nice.
Especially in here. But yeah.
These things cost a lot of money so you want to
keep them in good shape.
As you can see if you
keep them nice and clean.
when it comes to servicing them time, you get a little
bit not excited but you're happy
to work on something that's
nice and clean and you
can take pride in.
They'll be a few of you saying, "Oh don't cover all
the tower in stuff
because all the dirt and grot's
going to stick to it." Nah not really
you saw it come out.
How it came out and how much greasy grot
there wasn't stuck to it.
Some winches you might get it in, you
know, if it's sitting in the city a lot and
you get a lot of dirty rain.
We got a lot of dirty rain in Spain.
It came out pretty well. It's just more
about servicing them often.
Big one. Went that way.
pin in there
Now I can put the
washer on and the bearings.
Retaining clip. Now because this
retaining clip is broken
I don't have another one.
Just going back in.
And to put the mainshaft in. Dumbass.
one main shaft
There it goes. Ready to take fingers off.
Ah right. Still works.
Let's get stuff on there.
Oh give it a big whack Shayne.
Take a little bit more
care than I did just then.
Right, self tailer lined back up in the
position where it wants to be.