i bought the winches and they were exactly as advertised.
i bought them for spare
parts and was able to use many of the near-perfect gears. Turns out my winches have cast
bronze gears and the gears in the winches i bought were machined. The pinion drive
gear in these winches had 14 teeth while the pinion drive gears on my old winches had 11 teeth. The gears in the new winches were offset by a couple thousandths less than the gears i had. These last 2 are subtle but critical differences that were unfortunately enough so i could not use the pinion gears
Here's where it got fun - a buddy of mine belongs to a fly
fishing club and there's an old machinist who reportedly loves to machine up new gears for old reels. I hooked up w/ him and we've been working on new 11 tooth pinion gears for a while. (he's the one who told me gears were machines rather than cast). i now have an
aluminum prototype of the pinion
gear that i will be trying out this weekend. It seems to fit perfectly but we want to see it under load before he begins to machine the bronze gears (price of just about every metal has gone WAY up but
aluminum is much cheaper than bronze).
So if it's 11 tooth pinion gears you need, the machinist (who's name is also Paul) can probably make some up for you after we've proven mine. If it's other
parts of the
winch you might be needing, let me know and maybe we can
work something out.