So as some may know from other threads on SBO, I'm in the process of rebuilding all the winches on my 1977 Cherubini Hunter 30. The two single speed winches on the mast went smoothly enough and are now both functioning perfectly. Then I've moved to my 2 two speed winches at the cockpit. Got some difficulties with these - there will be more to do than simply cleaning. However, in this process, I'm thinking about long term maintenance and some questions are coming to mind.
So let me start with how these winches are mounted. There are 5 screws holding the winch in place. They are accessed from the top of the winch once you take the drum off. Those go through the fiberglass and on the undersize there is a washer and a nut. On the starboard side these are inside the back seat compartment. What a pain in the you a$$ to take off! OK, so this set-up is NOT going to get me real happy with maintaining these winches every year. You either need two people to take these off, or some crazy way to do it alone.
The photos below show how I figured to do it alone. So I have a really nice set of pliers that lock, but I was worried that once the nut was free, Murphy would place the pliers and nut and washer all in locations in-accessible deep in my bilge somewhere. So I used Gorilla tape (great stuff!) to hold the nose of the pliers and capture the washer if it fell off with the nut. Then a second piece of tape over the handle so that the whole assembly was suspended once the nut was free. Worked well. I didn't loose anything, winch is off.
So to do this, I had to go inside the back storage on the starboard side 14 times. Now, that compartment is large enough for me to get into, but only just barely. Doing it once isn't too bad, but back and forth for all 5 bolts is beyond my tolerance levels. Technically I will only have to do it 10 times in the future, but it took me some trials to figure out how to do everything on this first time. If anything is going to convince me I need to loose weight, it's going to be working on this sailboat...
Re-mounting is not going to go so easily...As I have a fair amount of time as one of these winches is destroyed and I need another one - just purchased off ebay - delivery will take some time. So in the meantime, I'm entertaining how to make this easier to work with.
My first thought (and my first thoughts are often more complicated than I typically end up with) is to build a stainless steel plate and permanently mount the nuts onto it, then glue/epoxy/bolt this plate in place on the underside where the washers and nuts currently reside. Then in the future, I can just unscrew the screws from the top of the winch and not worry about the nuts/washers falling off. However, the exact details of how best to do this are not coming to me very readily. Hence, I thought to post here and see what everybody's ideas might be on how to make taking these winches on and off an easy one-person job. Thoughts?
dj
So let me start with how these winches are mounted. There are 5 screws holding the winch in place. They are accessed from the top of the winch once you take the drum off. Those go through the fiberglass and on the undersize there is a washer and a nut. On the starboard side these are inside the back seat compartment. What a pain in the you a$$ to take off! OK, so this set-up is NOT going to get me real happy with maintaining these winches every year. You either need two people to take these off, or some crazy way to do it alone.
The photos below show how I figured to do it alone. So I have a really nice set of pliers that lock, but I was worried that once the nut was free, Murphy would place the pliers and nut and washer all in locations in-accessible deep in my bilge somewhere. So I used Gorilla tape (great stuff!) to hold the nose of the pliers and capture the washer if it fell off with the nut. Then a second piece of tape over the handle so that the whole assembly was suspended once the nut was free. Worked well. I didn't loose anything, winch is off.
So to do this, I had to go inside the back storage on the starboard side 14 times. Now, that compartment is large enough for me to get into, but only just barely. Doing it once isn't too bad, but back and forth for all 5 bolts is beyond my tolerance levels. Technically I will only have to do it 10 times in the future, but it took me some trials to figure out how to do everything on this first time. If anything is going to convince me I need to loose weight, it's going to be working on this sailboat...
Re-mounting is not going to go so easily...As I have a fair amount of time as one of these winches is destroyed and I need another one - just purchased off ebay - delivery will take some time. So in the meantime, I'm entertaining how to make this easier to work with.
My first thought (and my first thoughts are often more complicated than I typically end up with) is to build a stainless steel plate and permanently mount the nuts onto it, then glue/epoxy/bolt this plate in place on the underside where the washers and nuts currently reside. Then in the future, I can just unscrew the screws from the top of the winch and not worry about the nuts/washers falling off. However, the exact details of how best to do this are not coming to me very readily. Hence, I thought to post here and see what everybody's ideas might be on how to make taking these winches on and off an easy one-person job. Thoughts?
dj