Goiot 312 winch failure - SO 36.2

[timdaniel]

75 miles from home, my windlass failed. The motor no longer turns the winch. The axle is loose and can be turned freely by hand. Anybody have this happen? Is it terminal? Is there any point in trying to take it apart and fix it?

[timdaniel]

Hmm. Some research I did suggested some of the winches have shear pins. Does anyone know if this one has one?

[Charlie-Bravo]

Probably wise to leave it intact in case spares are needed, better to have a manual winch rather than no winch at all, and fix it when you get near a boat yard.

CB

[timdaniel]

I already have it apart. The pin was not broken, it was a jury rig from a 5/16 bolt peened out to 8 mm and driven into place. It fell out.

If that was the only problem I would be happy. The ball bearing carrier for the ball bearings on the driveshaft is half gone. Some of the ball bearings have disappeared.

I can replace the ball bearings but the carrier is another story. Without the carrier the balls will just fall out again.

For the record, this all happened because the winch was not used for a very long time sometime in the past. The driveshaft is only partly covered by oil, so the exposed top of the shaft and bearing carrier rusted. The bearing carrier rusted away. Had the winch been exercised occasionally this would not have happened.

We are going to try reinserting the ball bearings and holding them in place with a hose clamp. It should work well enough to get us through our current three week cruise..

[Charlie-Bravo]

Ahh the joys of sailing !

CB

[timdaniel]

Anybody know if Goiot still has parts for these? I am assuming not, but you never know. I contacted Rigrite and Mauri Pro who are NA dealers for Goiot, but haven't heard back yet.

[MartyB]

GOiot is part of Bainbridge International and/or Plastimo now after going BK. This will probably take some time to sort out what parts you may or may not be able to get. You may be able to find some common outer/inner/thickness bearing from a non Goiot equal supplier. Along with a pin that will work.

Marty

[timdaniel]

We were able to find an 8mm x 50 mm stainless threaded bolt that did the trick to replace the shear pin.  I decided to use a nylock nut rather than a nut and lock washer out of concern that shock loads could loosen the nut.  It took about an hour to get the nylock on with at least one thread showing out of the top of the nut because it was impossible to get tools inside the winch to tighten it.  I had to use a slot screwdriver and a hammer against the nut faces to tighten it less than 1/6 of a turn per hit.  We will correct this when we pull the winch apart this winter to try to fix it permanently.

Our only remaining issue is replacing the thrust bearing and we won't be able to do that until we get it all apart.  We are really hoping that the thrust bearing is either a common Euro one or can be replaced by something off-the-shelf.  

The windlass has survived about 10 anchor down/up cycles now, and things are looking good for getting it through to the end of the season.

[timdaniel]

So, we made it through to the end of the season with our jury-rigged windlass. Now we are trying to fix it permanently. To do that we need to get the case apart. That is proving to be difficult - we have tried all the usual things to separate the motor case from the gear case. Has anyone here been successful at this? How did you get it apart?

[timdaniel]

Lol. We got it apart by putting it on the ground and using a wood block and small sledge to crack open the case. The we inserted a paint scraper and ran it along the edge to break the sealant bond.

For the record the rusted out bearing is a standard SKF 51105 available anywhere.

We looked it over and can see no reason why we shouldn't continue using it once the bearing is replaced. The next challenge is replacing the rusted non-stainless screws in the Up/Down switch so that it doesn’t fall apart sometime soon.