Winch maintenance

[dwgifford]

I have Lewmar single and dual speed winches on my boat. The Lewmar manual says to clean with a parafin cleaner as other cleaners can damage the winch. What can you recommend.

Secondly, when mounting a new winch on a pad the installation guide says to bed in the bolts and tighten accordingly. I just bought a used Lewmar 10 single speed and the base is definitely designed to use flat head, countersunk screws. I would like to hear what others have used.

Thanks.

 

[chuckwayne]

use mineral spirits, available in the paint department, to carefully clean all the parts. If the winch is mounted on the boat, take a large flat box-I use the flats bottled water is packed in-cut a hole in the center just the right size to fit around the winch base. put the box around the winch and then disassemble. If any of the springs and pawls fly off the box should catch them. After all the parts are clean, use a light grease on the gears and bearings, but only winch oil on the pawls.

 

[dwgifford]

Thank you. This winch had not been mounted yet so I had the priviledge of doing the refurb off the boat.
Local reference recommended diesel fuel, and I tried that and it worked great. I probably will use the mineral spirits for those already mounted as I don't want a lot of mess in the cockpit.
As you said, I used light winch grease on every thing but the pawls which were cleaned and treated with a light machine oil. People tend to use too much grease in a lot of situations. Less is sometimes more.
Looks like we have a winner.