Barient, Barlow, Lewmar

[roverhi]

Barients were the Rolls Royce of winches in their day. Their Stainless drum winches are works of art, have two NST 22's on my boat, that don't show any sign of wear and could be 38 years old. If you are buying used, suggest you jump on any Barient that meets your needs.

Currently am in the process of replacing all my halyard winches with Anderson 12st winches. They work fine though are at most a couple of years old.

I've had Lewmar and Barlow NST winches on other boats and they all worked fine

Rumor has it that Lewmar bought Barient to get the patent on the Barient self tailing system.

Most winches came with stainless, chrome plated, or aluminum drums. Any manufacturers plated winches will show signs of wear on the plating. It's largely a cosmetic issue and shouldn't affect function. They can be rechromed if you want them to look new. Aluminum can suffer from corrosion. I wouldn't buy any used alumninum drum winch unless I had the opportunity to take it apart and personally inspect. FWIW, the aluminum drum Lewmar 43's were going strong after 10 years when I sold our W32. That was after 10's of thousands of mile, all in the tropics.

Aloha
Peter O.

[SkiprJohn]

Thanks for all the hints and the testimonials. I've ended up with two Barlow 32STs with aluminum drums and a 52ST and a 54ST with chrome drums. For the time being that'll have to do. I just can't spend the money for big new matching machinery. The Barlows are pretty darn big and seem to work pretty good. If they last 10 years I'll be happy. I know the Lewmars will last a good deal longer.
Kind Regards,
JohnL

[cjbeals]

Website with exploded diagrams for Barlow/Barient/Lewmar winches.
Index of /winches

[GrahamMatthews]

Having issues with electric Barient winches on Litle Harbor.
They are disengaging under light loads.
Anyone have any ideas to improve the torque curve?

[btrayfors]

Originally Posted by GrahamMatthews

Having issues with electric Barient winches on Litle Harbor.
They are disengaging under light loads.
Anyone have any ideas to improve the torque curve?

Check electrical connections and voltage at the winches. Since your post says "winches" it would seem it's happening with more than one. Low voltage is almost certainly a cause.

Bill

[GrahamMatthews]

Bill,
We have a problem with the drive gear retracting prematurely.
A spur gear protrudes from the base and engages the motor.
Placing a winch handle also causes this selfsame drive gear to disengage.

[stevewrye]

We have a new Boreal 44 and over the last 8 months have crossed the Atlantic from France to Panama. The boat came with all Lewmar winches. We have had Lewmar products on all of our boats in the past with no problems. So we went with the same this time around.

It was the biggest mistake we have ever made on boating gear. Both our 50's have failed within months and all winches must be serviced after even a two day passage. They free spin often as the machining of the seats for the palls in not right on all sets of gears. The holes for the gear spindles are not alighned properly and one winch had only 2 bearings on large gear instead of 3. They were also over packed with grease.

We have talked to many cruisers who have new Lewmar gear, (2 years or less old) and they are every bit as dissatisfied as we are. Our boat manufacture has tried to contact Lewmar about the problem as they are under warranty and for 5 months now and Lewmar will not answer back. Thank god Boreal is such a great company and will send us new winches as all else has failed.

Also we have had numerous lewmar blocks fail and the self tacking staysail traveler has all plastic parts that break with little effort.

Sorry to say Lewmar is not the company I used to trust. Just a heads up.

[GrahamMatthews]

I guess this forum is more for people to blindly carp and complain or to herald their great accomplishments. Seriously thought that I would get some practical help here.