Quote:
Originally Posted by Weyalan
It is time to service all the winches on Insatiable... there are only 8  (x2 runners, x2 primaries, x2 secondaries, x2 halyards)... all of them 2 speed self tailing Maxwells (28's and 24's).
Any advice or top tips for the sevicing?
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G'day Weyalan. Raven is all Maxwells and we pulled 'em all down and rebuilt 'em a few months back. First up,
Maxwell don't make winches anymore and have
sold all their tooling and spares to Arco-Hutton in
Sydney. They were a great deal of help to me when I needed it and
sold me all the
parts I required except for a couple of bits that are no longer available.
Few points to consider.
Before you do anything, ring Allan Hutton at Arco-Hutton 02 9623 2448 and get him to
email to you the exploded diagrams of each size
winch you need to service or if you
email me I can send to you what I have but our winches are 27STs, 20STs and 24nonSTs. You will need to dismantle before you start ordering
parts for obvious reasons.
Maxwell winches are pretty easy to pull apart and service, from memory there are no nasty tricks but you have to watch the pawl springs which are tiny and have a mind of their own.
On your
cockpit winches mounted vertically be careful as you pull off the drum. If the winches are badly clagged up inside, all the innards may try and come with the drum until the law of gravity takes over , you get my drift I'm sure, think kerplunk. Order some spares of
clutch and
gear springs so that you can afford to lose a few. Ice cream containers are great for the messy bits. Simply dump all the parts in with
cleaning fluid (turps or any common degreaser) and leave over night. Then go back and give 'em a good scrubbing with an old toothbrush, finally thoroughly (and I mean thoroughly) rinse off all the
cleaning fluid in warm
water before reassembly. If you leave any traces of the cleaning fluid on the parts it will react badly with the grease.
When it comes to horizontal mount, another big word of warning. As you undo the screw and start to remove the drum of winches on
mast or boom, have something (bucket perhaps) under the
winch to catch any bits that decide to make a break for freedom. Clutches should also be identified as they MUST go back as they were. Some are clockwise rotation, others anti clockwise.
When reassembling do not go
overboard with the grease. It's a common mistake which does nothing except fill up your winches with grease. Winches should be serviced once or even twice a year depending on usage so you don't need ten years supply of grease.
Importantly, if any of your winches are mounted on metal plates (commonly this is so with
mast or boom mounted winches) make sure you use the correct gunk to isolate the two metals or you will start an electrolytic reaction. Sorry, but I forget the name of the gunk.
Finally, do you have lock in winch handles ? It is again a common problem that standard lock in winch handles do not
work in Maxwell winches. Maxwell chose to use their own unique design and you cannot buy new or second hand maxwell winch handles for love or
money. Arco, however, offer a service where they re machine the drive shafts so that they will accept the industry standard lock in winch handle. It costs around $25.00 a winch and I reckon was
money well spent. We even bought some drop forged chrome winch handles from Arco that are lovely. Expensive but lovely . don't float but lovely.
Have lot's of newspaper, cleaning clothes, paper towel and clean dry rags. Plenty of containers for the bits. We also got one of those
cheap blue plastic tarps and threw that over the
cockpit. Judgng by it's condition when we finished it was a good idea.
I hope that is helpful, any questions by all means get in touch. I have no idea how much winch servicing experience you have but I hope there is not too much of stating the bleeding obvious in the above.
all the best
Andrew
ps -we were sailing with Invincible the other week. She is, I believe a sistership to Insatiable.