mile marker hydraulic winch rotation direction under load

[prelude]

Hi All,

Last week I finished mounting my mile marker hydraulic winch on my range. As has been said by many, now experienced by me, it is slow :) but steady and powerfull. Where electric winches slow down and overheat, it seems I can do this all day long! In order to keep the PS pump happy I took the oil cooler from another P38 (the top small one for the engine oil) and mounted that beneath the gearbox oil cooler, there is just enough space for it. I removed the original PS fluid cooler and piped it through the new one to help keep the fluid nice and cool during long winching operations. So far I have not noticed any increase in oil temperature and my PS pump seems happy enough.

Anyway, my problem is that I have had quite a bit of difficulty getting and keeping the winch in gear. For those in the know: the milemarkers are 2 speed winches by operating 2 levers. One is high/free, the other is low/free. when flipping a lever it does not always pop into gear but I guess that is normal due to the allignment of the cogs inside? after some "encouragement" by winching in and out for a few times it usually finds a gear (just like aulro.com :P). The problem is keeping it in gear though. As I understand it the high gear is meant to allow for quick respooling of the cable but as far as I know there is no reason not to use it under load, for when you're not bogged down to the door sills for example. In high I constantly had the winch pop out of gear, audibly and you could see the lever pop up and down and in low gear I had the same problem. I had to slowly take up load and push against the lever to keep it in low. Once there was enough tension on the cable it would stay in and winch the entire lenght of the cable without a fuss.

Now, I took the cable and motor of the spool to facilitate in mounting the damn heavy thing. I am not sure I rewound the cable in the same way it came off though. Before undertaking the herculean task of mounting the cable the other way around, are winches supposed to only be loaded in one direction of rotation and can that be the cause of my problems?

Any thoughts are as usual highly appreciated!

Thanks,
-P

[donh54]

Haven't had anything to do with this particular winch, but in some others I've used over the years a couple of things could cause the above issues.
Is the gear lever travelling through its full range of movement?
Is there a spring, or possibly a detent that holds the gear lever in a distinct position?
Is there any wear in the bushes/bearings supporting the pinion shaft?
Any wear in the teeth on pinion or ring gear?

I've often found that machinery that has sat around for a while has crud that hardens on shafts etc and limits the movement of things.
Hope you get it going ok. I've been intrigued by them since I first heard about them. Seem like a great idea, and at my age, slow isn't a problem [bigsmile]