Winch Testing

I happen to be looking at some 20,000lb front 5 ton winches (I'm a potential buyer) and I think the price is right, but I want to know if there's a way I can test them by hand before I buy them to make sure they're not broken inside or something. (not looking for guarantees or anything) I'm trying to replace a broken winch on my M-55 and a missing one on my M-62. The one I laid hands on seems to have a lot of play in the drum without the input shaft moving and I am not sure if that's alright, it seems like you can flop the drum back and forth about 1/6 of a turn, without the input shaft turning. The input shaft is too hard to turn by hand , but with channel locks I was able to turn it and after I took up the slack, it turned the drum fine. Does anybody know how they should feel by hand like this? I can't obviously hook it to a truck to test before buying. The drum lock works and when the longer lever is towards the drum, it turns freely, and towards the outside is where it acts like I described above.

I suppose I should ask if $250-$350 is a good price for a winch with no PTO shaft, cable, or self leveling roller, but with the bridge for the leveler and the fairlead rollers intact. I thought so but maybe I'm wrong. One of my trucks already had the winch so I don't need all of the stuff for that truck, I'll have to find stuff for the other one.

There will be some slack in the drum. This isn't slack in the gears, it's slack in the dogs, this is completely normal. The dog clutch doesn't have very tight tolerances, if it did, you'd have a hard time moving the engagement lever.

Sounds ok to me. The drag brake keeps the input from spinning freely. Just make sure you check everywhere for cracks.

Thanks for the input guys, it has been a long time since I looked at my broken one in the parts pile and I'm far from home so I can't go look now anyway. I think Ill grab a couple of them.

If its not on a vehicle, pull the 6 bolts out of the side plate to inspect the gears. Shouldn't take long.