I've just purchased a 1994 40.5 and was primed to dismantle the winches and clean them. When they were apart, I was amazed to see that the largest of the two gears was situated inboard so that there wasn't enough room between the base of the winch and the coaming to extricate the gears for cleaning. The smaller was located outboard and was easily removed as it would have been if the winch had been rotated 180 degrees; in which case the larger gear could also have been removed with no trouble. Since the mounting bplts are not positioned symmetrically around the winch's base, I can't remove and reinstall the entire winch to facilitate gear removal. Was this done for some reason which escapes me or is it just the result of an unthinking, poorly supervised installer? Some one out there must have cleaned his winches and come up with a way of attending to this problem besides removing the entire winch and having to rebed and rebolt. Anyone?