Lewmar Electronic Winch Issue

[poiu]

Originally Posted by northwestsailor

Sorry to revive this old thread but I have a slightly different problem with my Lewmar electric winch.

Mine, when it works, will work fine with a load until it sounds like it is loading up ie straining a bit with the furler line. Then it shuts off. No predicable amount of time must pass before it mysteriously will start working again when the button is pushed. Everything looks clean and well put together with no obvious corrosion.

Any thoughts, ideas, suggestions or comments would be most welcome.

The control box switches off the power to the motor if the motor gets overloaded or if it thinks it is overloaded. There may well be a fault in the wiring causing extra resistance such as a corroded contact. It may also be a component failure on the PCB. I had that problem. With mine I found a blown varistor witnessed by a glob of insulation that leaked out of it (a blue rectangular component with a little screw on it). This was measured to show an incorrect resistance reading. I sourced a new one using the part # on the component. 10c only. Desoldered the old and resoldered the new. Works fine now. A new control box is what Lewmar said I needed. $1000+ Ho ho.

[Lombo]

Sounds like the same issue that I was having with my winches. As the control boxes started to fail the winches would shut down as load increased, however, not on a consistent basis. I solved the problem by replacing the control boxes. I ordered the replacements from P2 Marine. Cost was ~$561 for the control box and ~$23 for the control box upgrade kit. This was cheaper then sending the control boxes to Lewmar for troubleshooting and repair/replacement.

[northwestsailor]

It seems pretty clear now from Lombo and poiu comments that the problem lies with the control box. This is interesting because the control box is down below in the engine room completely dry and safe....and possibly dying whereas the winch is above deck in the wind, rain and salt water environment and now appears perfectly fine. Hmmmm......