Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don't read this :)

This is the deuce winch on my M715...so I put it here cause its a deuce-

So all of a sudden my winch is bogging down my 427BBC and there's a really loud singing sound from the winch. I feel around and the front cover is warm and the rest is not. I finish what I need it for and pull the log up to the farm. I check it out up there by engaging the PTO and letting the drive spin on fast idle without the winch clutch engaged. The thing is singing really badly and I'm afraid I may have to eat crow from a damaged winch. No leaking oil and full of oil.

Happily...that's not the case. When I got that winch from Rich Green I checked it out and all was good. That was probably 8 years ago. For some unknown reason my winch brake was engaging by itself. I have taken them off of all three other winches as I learned since and find them absolutely useless. Pretty much forgot this one's band was still on it. I wanted to keep working and not take the winch out to do that so I loosened the band a LOT.

Sorry about the rant but these things are about as useless as the port holes on a Buicks fender. I've pulled LOTS with this and other Garwoods and have never had one unspool by cable pull backspinning the worm.

RE: Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don

The winch brake is to hold a load if you shear your pin or put your tranny in neutral..etc. The original Buick Portholes actually were holes... Your winch brake is on all the time and you drive thru it...The freewheeling brake which keeps the cable from unrolling when you are driving 60 miles an hour and the hook jumps out and starts dragging on the ground is simply a pin in a hole in the drum. As you seem to use winches a lot, proper maintenance of the drag brake is a must.

RE: Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don

The winch brake is to hold a load if you shear your pin or put your tranny in neutral..etc. The original Buick Portholes actually were holes... Your winch brake is on all the time and you drive thru it...The freewheeling brake which keeps the cable from unrolling when you are driving 60 miles an hour and the hook jumps out and starts dragging on the ground is simply a pin in a hole in the drum. As you seem to use winches a lot, proper maintenance of the drag brake is a must These winches were designed for intermittent duty to retreive a vehicle or other equipment once in a blue moon... not for timber skidders. You need a real loggers winch if you are serious about continuous duty.

RE: Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don

I have a logger's winch not doing anything here Tom. Let me know next time you head through.

Re: RE: Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don

acetomatoco said:

The winch brake is to hold a load if you shear your pin or put your tranny in neutral..etc. The original Buick Portholes actually were holes... Your winch brake is on all the time and you drive thru it...The freewheeling brake which keeps the cable from unrolling when you are driving 60 miles an hour and the hook jumps out and starts dragging on the ground is simply a pin in a hole in the drum. As you seem to use winches a lot, proper maintenance of the drag brake is a must These winches were designed for intermittent duty to retreive a vehicle or other equipment once in a blue moon... not for timber skidders. You need a real loggers winch if you are serious about continuous duty.

Click to expand...

Thanks ACE! As requested, I wasn't gonna post on this thread, but was counting on you to explain what the fine Gar Wood engineers designed. You came through like a champ.

Regards,
DDoyle

RE: Re: RE: Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don

I'm with Tom, I still don't see much point in the brake. Even if you do shear the pin or put the transmission in neutral the winch is not going to be able to back-spin the worm drive. On our dual line wrecker we never engaged the brake while towing and never had anything fail or drop and that was a lot of towing and recovery on that rig.

RE: Re: RE: Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don

David, I was just busting your chops.

Ace..., I'm familiar with the early Buicks a little, like there under seat heater...I meant the late model plastic fender jobbies.

I pulled a semi tractor back on to the roadway one time where I could bounce the rear end of the truck with the clutch. Never unspooled a bit. In the 8 or 9 years that trucks been together I've pulled a bunch of stuff. Even if one is to argue that the brake was on and it was helping, I've done the same with the rear winch in that truck (another 10K Garwood) with brake removed... AND ...on my 20K Garwood on the nose of my deuce I'll pull 'til I get to where I need it, then kick out the PTO and back the truck up and drag the load to where I want it. And I've got the brake removed from that and the brake housing machined down to just the four bolt bearing retainer. I am intermittent- I don't log for a living, I log to have fun with the trucks (help justify ownership... you know) when big enough timber falls down especially in hard to get to areas. I've used the winch 10 times in two days now and not for prolly 8 months before that on this truck.

Now just to ask the question, have you ever seen one unspool from being pulled on (not talking about the pin lock) or dragging a load?

RE: Re: RE: Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don

Hmm, I'm wondering about this because my winch, when it's not engaged can be unspooled just fine. Is the clutch between the drum and the brake then?

RE: Re: RE: Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don

The PTO shaft drives the worm gear inside the drivers side of the winch housing. The other end of the worm gear from the PTO input is the brake. The brake only stops the PTO shaft/worm gear from turning. When you move the lever on the passenger side you are connecting or dis connecting the drum from the worm gear.(It is actually something else, but that is the easiest way to say it since I can't do pictures here at work.) There is an adjustment on the bottom passenger side to control the free spool of the drum. (The big slotted screw driver counter sunk screw probably hiding behind the passenger side frame extension.)

RE: Re: RE: Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don

Ryan, on the top passenger side of the winch there a little handle that should be seated in a weird looking notched nut. That, when seated in the deepest notch, should be engaged in dimples in the side of the spool...sort of like a detent. When you go to use the winch, pull that thing out and turn it 90* and set it into the more shallow notch. That keeps it from unspooling.

My debate is when the winch clutch IS engaged in the winch but the PTO is not engaged at the transmission/in-cab. Try and unspool it then.

RE: Re: RE: Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don

I have a bunch of winch equipped M35s and 5 tons, I have always tested my winches for workability as soon as I bought them. But, I never tested them for load holding ability until I got them on a jobsite, usually over doing what the winch was meant for. I have had them spool backwards and realized what the manual was saying when it came to the part about the winch load holding test. I do adjust my winch brakes and I do also adjust the free spool brake pad at the right lower front corner. Garwood really knew what they were doing, why doubt it?. Our lives don't depend on it but the guys the trucks were built for, theirs did, while they were being shot at. JT out

RE: Re: RE: Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don

So you are saying that you have had a worm drive winch spool out under load with the worm drive engaged?

RE: Re: RE: Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don

Attaboy JT... Just like the folks who take the batteries out of their smoke detectors because they don't like the noise... eventually they pay the supreme sacrifice and get no sympathy from me..

Re: RE: Re: RE: Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don

Elwenil said:

So you are saying that you have had a worm drive winch spool out under load with the worm drive engaged?

Click to expand...

Yes, it's hard to believe that this could happen with a reduction of 23:1...

Re: RE: Re: RE: Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don

spicergear said:

Ryan, on the top passenger side of the winch there a little handle that should be seated in a weird looking notched nut. That, when seated in the deepest notch, should be engaged in dimples in the side of the spool...sort of like a detent. When you go to use the winch, pull that thing out and turn it 90* and set it into the more shallow notch. That keeps it from unspooling.

Click to expand...

Right, that's the drum lock. Back of the winch is the dog clutch. I was just wondering where the path of power was...

Lesse if I can draw the power path correctly. (this is upside down of course)

Double lines are power path. Single lines are spaces (the forum software deletes lots of extra spaces for some dang reason).

PTO
||
||
||
||
worm ___BRAKE________DrumDrumDrumDrum============\\
gear==Planetary Gear=====================Planetarygear&Clutch
________BRAKE________DrumDrumDrumDrum============//

My debate is when the winch clutch IS engaged in the winch but the PTO is not engaged at the transmission/in-cab. Try and unspool it then.

Click to expand...

Ahh, that makes sense of course. My winch of course, with the clutch disengaged (the lever at the winch passenger side) it free spools.

RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don

After just getting off the phone with a tech support guy at a VERY WELL respected winch manufacturer, and giving him the run down on what this debate is...he told me some very interesting industry wide winch FACTS.

-if the winch's gearset is healthy, it is very, VERY, difficult to impossible to backspin them where a winch with overly worn gears stands a chance of being overcome and backspun by very substantial spool input.
-it all has to do with specific winch gearset design of the pressure and helix angles on the gears.
-winch specific gearsets are ENGINEERED with helix and pressure angles that when the power is discontinued to be applied by the drive gear (worm) the gears become (by design) locked or jammed by pressure from the spool.
-there are high efficiency designs that allow backspin but these are not used in winch application for the specific reasons of not wanting a winch to unwind under pressure against the gearset from the spool.
-because the pressure and helix angles lock upon reversal of input (via spool trying to backspin) the band is not designed to be there for load holding as it is designed to be there to instantaneously stop the input. This is why the input has to 'power-through' the band to drive the winch.
-the band absorbs the inertia FROM the PTO's driveline so when the clutch is pushed in the PTO drive is stopped and nothing further (from spinning mass inertia) will be spun/driven and correspondingly spooled in.
-it's an input safety by design.

This is an overlap of marketing, not engineering.

RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don

But if you have a well worn winch, are you saying it can un-spool easer? If that is the case, there is no fix for a well worn winch except new gears or new winch.

Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don

spicergear said:

...he told me some very interesting industry wide winch FACTS...

Click to expand...

Well explained! And it makes perfect sense to me.
That band brake would primarily help to immediately stop all rotating parts if we depress the clutch while unspooling under load, e.g. lowering heavy loads when used as a crane.

RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don

Sorry to be the fly in this ointment, but...the "back brake" is SPECIFICALLY to hold the load in the event of a shear pin failure, or depressing the clutch. ot knocking the PTO out of gear. You do not power through the back brake, except when you are operating the winch in reverse to lower a load or back off tension. A properly adjuste back brake can be over come by hand on the drive shaft - in the pulling direction, but is tough in the other. They are self constricting spring pre-loaded band brakes. Yes old technology but it works. We use winches reguarly at work and if a back brake gets loose even the big winches (60,000# single line) will readily reverse spin when power is removed. The winch on Squirt-Truck is (was) new and easily spooled off just being pulled by a 16,000# fork lift till the brake was properly adjusted.

Lastly, check your manuals, the adjustment for the back brake is to be just tight enough to hold the load. Do not confuse the back brake with the over-run brake that prevents free spooling when pulling the rope out or the drum lock which is the pin for travel locking.

RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Re: RE: Winch brake grrr.. -DDoyle don

Glad I took the time to speak directly with a manufacturer instead of actual events and TM verbage carved in stone. I'm comfortable with my equipment, everyone else should be comfortable with theirs...even if the end user's verbage differs from those of manufacturers.