Bamford Winch Help!

I got my Bamford winch today and am I ever excited. It looks like it's never been used. No wear evident on the drum, the fairleads are untouched, the cable looks like it's been in a warehouse, and the original military tag and manual is all intact. And I got this from a very reputable dealer in Canada for under $600US! It was in it's original packing crate which I had to tear apart to get the thing out.
This one is a 1968 serial 679 (plate looks new like the day it left the factory). The Australian Army tag shows a stamp of 23-Feb 1982 and is signed by N Yarde. Workshop/contractor lists "Tech SPT COY-11 SUP. BN.
Can anyone provide any history on this winch based on this info?
Thanks

We have a Bamford PTO winch on our 79 LWB Series III (1900hrs, 59000km) which seems to be in good condition.

I learned how to drive it by googling. However, when we tried to pull down a dead tree with it today, we ran into a problem. Initially the load takeup went fine, but as soon as the load increased a bit, the winch seemed to 'let go' as if there was an overload device that was releasing the load. Only problem is that the load was quite light. I tried using the winch to pull the landrover up to the tree, but that load was too much and the landrover rolled backwards.

I had a friend check that the PTO shaft was turning while the winch was 'letting go' and it was, without a break. So something is happening within the winch that is causing the problem.

Any thoughts?

G'day All, From memory they have an overload/shear pin it's made of ?copper I think, it is located behind the winch itself where the shaft attachs to the winch, again thats from memory cheers Dennis:angel:

up until a couple of years ago when I last looked Bamford was still in production, if you google them you will probably find they are still in production, when I contacted them they were very helpful