The Winch

[ellicat]

Last Monday, after we had dealt with the sharks of Moreton Bay, my winch died when retrieving the boat.

At first it started to stutter about half way in as it was winching, then it chattered. I held my breath, but it stopped dead about a foot short. I thought maybe that my remote battery had dies, so went to the car and tried the spare. Still nothing.

In the end I reversed the car back so the rear tyres were just in the water. This was enough to float the boat on while Kat pulled on the rope. I had to wind the rope with my fingers on the spool - slow. A little bit loose but secure, I pulled the trailer and boat from the water. Fortunately no one was behind us waiting. As I pulled up into the rigging zone I gave a little bit of an extra push on the brakes and this brought the boat right into place and I was able to secure it more firmly.

This brings me to today. These winches aren't that expensive and I had a spare at home - brand new. So I removed the old winch, but left the old control box in place, as I figured it was the motor that had given up the ghost. Got it all wired etc. Plugged it in to the car. Nothing. Dead as a doornail.

Okay. I figured it must be the old control box that wasn't working. I went through the process of swapping over to the new control box. Confidently, I hit the remote and ... Nothing. Damn. Now I had to troubleshoot. Got the multi-meter out. No power at the winch or control box. No power at the Anderson plug. I am an idiot. Why wouldn't I have checked this first. It has actually happened to me before, which makes my stupidity even worse. haha

I wasn't sure if it was a fuse or circuit breaker that I had installed. Lifted the bonnet. Couldn't see a 60Amp fuse anywhere. I rang the Auto sparkies, that put in the plug, to ask what they would have used as I couldn't find it. They said drop in and they'll sort it. Which I did. They upped it to a 70 Amp fuse and gave me a spare (now that I know where it is tucked away).

Simple lesson - start with the easy stuff first, not the other way around. 2 hours wasted and a good day's fishing missed unnecessarily.

[mangajack]

You are no different to the rest of us Brian, been guilty of similar assumptions many times....maybe we should treat everything like women....totally un-predictable.

[Bretto77]

My beautiful woman is the winch.  Beautifully predictably unpredictable. But just like Brian's winch, it's usually the simple overlooked things that remind one that they are not infallible either. At least that's my experience with winches.

[Bretto77]

24 minutes ago, Bretto77 said:

My beautiful woman is the winch.  Beautifully predictably unpredictable. But just like Brian's winch, it's usually the simple overlooked things that remind one that they are not infallible either. At least that's my experience with winches.

Oops, I have just realised that I need to provide complete clarification. My beautiful woman learnt english in New Zealand. I was talking about a winch. Here and now ruling out any poor pronunciation that could be construed as me referring to my beautiful woman as a wench. Absolutely not the case. She just gets a couple of vowels confused every so often...

@Kat

 

 

[Huxstang]

See Brett I was going to say “you will pay for that” but seems you already have.

And for Brian….after years of offroad touring, I always check earth first then fuses.  

If ever you need ANL/MIDI/AMI/MAXI etc fuses as spares etc drop into Springers at Capalaba.  They have the full range and pretty decent prices - I get basically all my 12v stuff from them.