Outer Limits 4x4 Board

thought id post a few pics of what i've done to improve a ramsey 8000lb pto winch just in case anyone else is thinking of doing something similar it may be of some help or possibly no help at all

when i got it it was damaged, what im pretty shore what happened was the bearing wore out,colapsed and the worm gear tried to exit out of the housing through the bearing cap.
so first thing to do was replace the old style Angular contact round ball race bearing with tapered roller type bearings.
part number: NSK 30304J

this change alone was always going to place a bit more load on the end caps which are only held on by 4 little 1/4 inch bolts which is not much with the whole force of the worm gear pushing against it [although i must admit i've never heard of them failing].
so i turned up some new end caps which are wide enough to come out to the mounting face of the winch so the bracket the winch is bolted to becomes part of the structure holding the worm gear in.

needed a bit more releaf cut in each end to clear bearing cage looks like the worm got kinda warm at some stage, heres the seal in place

finshed item

there we go, hope that is of use to someone out there.

thanks for posting.. got any other mods planned? I'm keen to see how people have set up air free spool on theirs..

Nice mod:)
The hot bit is probably the localised heat treatment of the gear teeth.

Baz

shorty_f0rty wrote:thanks for posting.. got any other mods planned? I'm keen to see how people have set up air free spool on theirs..

i was going to do air free spool but decided to do a lever through the tray with a sort of L shaped slot and a piviting lever with a spring so it locks in at the engaged position. they have a ball and spring type lock built into them but i thought id do that for extra security.
one thing to maby look out for with doing an air ram setup would be the strength of the shift fork inside the winch, its just made of cast iron and i dont know if it would take all that much to brake it if an air ram was pushing against it when the dogs weren't lined up. so maby have to use a very small air ram or maby a pressure reg, or make a stronger fork? not shore

I found that under load the dogs could work their way free. So i made up a clevis for the end of the engagement lever that held it in place by pinning it to a matching tag on the bull bar. Was just an R clip to hold it in. I found that back angling the dogs just made it hard to engage/disengage them.

Also, never EVER use the winch as a snigging line. If you put the drum under extreme loading against the braking force of the worm drive either by skull dragging shit or by falling back against the winch during a slack line operation you WILL bend the main shaft. Ask me how i know.