I embarked on the task of trying to do maintenance on my (2) Lewmar ST-30's (2 speed) on my '93 Hunter30T. As noted elsewhere in these forums, the Lewmar design does not make for easy maintenance due to the mounting position relative to the cockpit coming. It appears (to me) that the winch mounting setup that worked so well for the Barient winches used on earlier Hunter30's was not a good fit for the Lewmar. With the Lewmar, you can not remove the larger gear cluster for cleaning without removing the entire winch assembly. Some of the previous suggestions regarding this problem have been to remove and rotate the winch assembly, which does solve the problem, but not always easy to do. Another is to remove the winch assemblies and put a 3/8 teak (or other) material as a spacer. That also works, but is a bit more work. And lastly, enlarge the opening in the gear housing for the smaller gear assembly so that you can remove both gear sets out of that opening. That is a lot of work, but also solves the problem.
My question is does anyone have a better solution (easier solution) to fix this problem?
My question is does anyone have a better solution (easier solution) to fix this problem?