winches and mud/water..

[WTF]

hey all,

just curious if people get paranoid about whether their electric winch is going to work before they enter bog holes etc.

i dont know much about them, but id guess they cant really like it much, and i know a lot of people talk about servicing them etc after/before trips, but that surely gets cumbersome if you were going to do a weekend play in the mud then have to service it every time.

i assume there is some level of seal on them to ensure they can handle it, but yeah im just wondering if a lot of the time you would think twice about a "play in mud" considering that you might wind up having to service the winch every time it gets muddy/wet. .

thanks

mark

[MUD EMPIRE]

Me thinks that the cheaper winches don't handle the water
as good as a quality item (eg. Repco V's Warn). So you
would have to service a cheepy more regularly. Generaly
you service a winch annually..................

[GQ4.8coilcab]

whatever winch you buy, warn or repco/ebay, pull it apart and seal it up with gasket silicon (that blue stuff). Put a brass fitting in the motor end and run a breather into your engine bay and you will have many trouble free years winching

[physh]

From what I understand - Ya should clean it out (hose it out or whatever) every time with clean water pretty soon after playing in the mud (to get rid of the dirt particles), then run the winch under some load to heat it up and get rid of the moisture so it doesn't rust.

Plus test it out yourself every couple months, just winch yourself up an easy hill to make sure it's all good.

Maintenance sounds like a pain in the ass, but it's a whole hell of a lot less painful than a broken winch...


Probably a good idea to get a full service every 12 months as well, ensure everything's in top shape.

"Most" long-lasting winches are over $2000 worth to buy - for the extra few bucks it costs you to maintain and service it, it's good insurance against having to fork out again...


My 5 cents.