Winch grease recommendations?

[thinwater]

Just curious. Has anyone had a winch failure? A pawl failure?

For my case (25 years of boats with winches and helping friends)...

• One consignment store winch, bought for decoration, had a broken spring and stiff grease. It was fine.
  
• One Harken 40 had a crack in the plastic bearing cage (25 years and a long time since it was serviced). It was a secondary that was very seldom used and I'm not sure lack of service had anything to do with the failure. There was no wear. We put it back together that way and it continued for another 10 that I know of. The crack disn't get worse, so I suspect it was a manufacturing defect.

 

[Maine Sail]

Just curious. Has anyone had a winch failure? A pawl failure?

Yes I have seen it a few times on customers boats and they were usually on winches well beyond due for service. I did have one case on a pair of less than 10 year old winches that had been serviced regularly using only Lewmar grease and pawl oil where the pawl pockets elongated horribly. I suspect this was a manufacturing defect but Lewmar denied it.

Over the years I have seen the pawl holes elongate, springs jam or fail then all the load is on second pawl & spring and eventually it too fails to lock. A customer of mine almost broke his arm when the remaining pawl failed to lock.I have also seen loose sloppy drums (usually aluminum drums), rounded pawl edges and plenty of broken pawl springs.

New:

Bad/worn one:

 

[justsomeguy]

Has anyone had a winch failure? A pawl failure?

Pat Shulte of Bumfuzzle fame described a winch problem that perfectly fitted the "grease on the pawls" possibility.

 

[dLj]

They were bright so possibly low grade stainless. Not sure stainless comes in "Spring Steel". On the refit winches, I found circ-clips made of high carbon steel. They just rust away.

Yes, stainless is made into spring steels. Austenitic stainless steels can be hardened through cold working, which is how they make stainless springs. There are several commonly used austenitic stainless steel grades used in making springs. Does not necessarily mean a "low" grade of stainless. 316 can be made into a spring, for example.

dj

 

[jviss]

I had a Lewmar size 16 self tailing winch break a gear. The bronze gear was unavailable, anywhere. I salvaged the gear from a non-self-tailing winch of the same size. Don't know why it broke, if infrequent maintenance could have caused this.

2017-11-18 10.27.33

• jviss
• Nov 18, 2017

2017-11-18 10.27.54

• jviss
• Nov 18, 2017

 

[jssailem]

Certainly possible. Maintenance is important. But also it may have been tying to do something beyond it's capabilities with bad maintenance. Or it may have been a latent manufacturing defect that just failed.

 

[jviss]

Certainly possible. Maintenance is important. But also it may have been tying to do something beyond it's capabilities with bad maintenance. Or it may have been a latent manufacturing defect that just failed.

Well, just using it for its intended purpose, 'though it's conceivable it was undersized by Catalina; the secondaries on the coach roof are 16's, while on the Tartan the equivalent winches are 32's. These are the halyard winch and mainsheet winch.

 

[kloudie1]

Jviss, it looks more like a defect in the gear casting caused that crack.. I can't see the crack face, but I'd think that a defect (inclusion) in the thin part at the tooth root probably started cracking over time.. time and alternating stress probably propagated the crack until the remaining metal cross section became to small to hold the load and it cracked through.. I have seen this kind of failure several times in big gearboxes..
Edit: complicating that is the possible use of sintered metal (press formed from beads or powder) as the base material.. much more prone to that kind of failure.

 

[jssailem]

Claude. Love your knowledge of metallurgy and manufacturing.
JViss... plus 1 what Claude said.

 

[thinwater]

...
New:

Bad/worn one:

I wonder, is this the result of heavy use, going way to long between services, or using a lubricant that can't last long?

Let me put that a different way. We avoid grease because as it ages (particularly old conventional greases--not so much today's synthetics) it can get thick and the pawls can stick. We like light machine oil (on the order of 10 weight) because the pawls can move easily and it has little tendency to thicken. However, light machine oil has very little endurance in a wet environment. I have not tested or read testing, but the wash off resistance is probable 10-100 less. This is still OK if the winch is stripped every year... like that's going to happen. In fact, the notion that a winch should still need annual service, after all of these years of advances, is quaint.

So I find myself wondering if with today's new lubricants,which are exceptionally oxidation stable compared to the traditional products, if there is not a better choice that will last longer and not lead to this sort of wear problem. Will a modern grease thicken to the point where a pawl will hang up? I believe the answer is probably no. What about a slightly heavier oil?

I don't have the answer. But my gut tells me that light machine oil is not the best possible answer for winches that are going to be serviced once every 5-15 years. The evidence is in front of us. This probably won't resonate with the readers of this thread, because they will service the winches. It should with the winch manufacturers, but they are really more worried about problems within the wareentee period. They are in denial if they believe their product will be serviced at all, ever by 70% of the customers.

I'd bet lunch, that after 10 years of no service, a pawl coated with a thin layer of Green Grease (not just any grease--something known to be very stable) would still be fine and a pawl coated with thin oil would look like the picture above. After all, we worry about the extreme pressure properties of the grease, but these see some pretty extreme pressure too, though it is intermittent and through very little range of motion. But that tiny little pawl may have nearly a ton resting on it. It seems like asking a lot of light machine oil to resist wash-off and bear that kind of pressure.

Just provoking thought.

 

[Davidasailor26]

I wonder, is this the result of heavy use, going way to long between services, or using a lubricant that can't last long?

Let me put that a different way. We avoid grease because as it ages (particularly old conventional greases--not so much today's synthetics) it can get thick and the pawls can stick. We like light machine oil (on the order of 10 weight) because the pawls can move easily and it has little tendency to thicken. However, light machine oil has very little endurance in a wet environment. I have not tested or read testing, but the wash off resistance is probable 10-100 less. This is still OK if the winch is stripped every year... like that's going to happen. In fact, the notion that a winch should still need annual service, after all of these years of advances, is quaint.

So I find myself wondering if with today's new lubricants,which are exceptionally oxidation stable compared to the traditional products, if there is not a better choice that will last longer and not lead to this sort of wear problem. Will a modern grease thicken to the point where a pawl will hang up? I believe the answer is probably no. What about a slightly heavier oil?

I don't have the answer. But my gut tells me that light machine oil is not the best possible answer for winches that are going to be serviced once every 5-15 years. The evidence is in front of us. This probably won't resonate with the readers of this thread, because they will service the winches. It should with the winch manufacturers, but they are really more worried about problems within the wareentee period. They are in denial if they believe their product will be serviced at all, ever by 70% of the customers.

I'd bet lunch, that after 10 years of no service, a pawl coated with a thin layer of Green Grease (not just any grease--something known to be very stable) would still be fine and a pawl coated with thin oil would look like the picture above. After all, we worry about the extreme pressure properties of the grease, but these see some pretty extreme pressure too, though it is intermittent and through very little range of motion. But that tiny little pawl may have nearly a ton resting on it. It seems like asking a lot of light machine oil to resist wash-off and bear that kind of pressure.

Just provoking thought.

I thought part of the reason not to grease the pawls was that the grease could partially fill the teeth that the pawls should engage against and attract dirt there, preventing the pawls from ratcheting properly.

 

[dLj]

Fracture at gear root base - the case of this gear - is not likely due to lubrication unless the lubrication is also used for cooling, not the case in this gear. If the gear is indeed cast, then a casting defect is possible. I would be surprised if the gear was made through MIM (or other powder consolidation method). You need a pretty large volume of production to warrant the creation of the technology to produce parts through those methods. I'd be surprised if production of a gear like this would have such a projected production estimate.

It may be machined out of bar stock. in which case other mechanisms may be at play. Very hard to know from the pictures submitted.

dj