Not all winch levers are created equal!

[moriboy]

A few weeks ago I broke my winch clutch lever, but found a replacement at white owl. When I broke the original one, I thought that it seemed pretty light duty.
Today, the replacement showed up and to my surprise, this one is not light duty!
The one that was on my truck is cast aluminum. The new one I received today is cast iron. The levers are identical in every way, even the same nsn number.
Just wanted to share this with you guys in the event you ever need to replace yours.

 

[gringeltaube]

Thank you; just learned something more here, about our winches!

Although I believe the Fe ones are not cast but forged...?

G.

 

[m16ty]

I've never seen a AL one. I assumed they all were Fe.

 

[moriboy]

I knew something was different when I picked the new one up for the first time, it is much heavier!

 

[spicergear]

-G, All the ones I've seen were forged as well.

Wow, and aluminum one?? All things considered though, it should be fine as it's not a hard pull IF the winch is being operated correctly. It's probably some diecast POS that WILL break sooner or later though...

On the 20,000lb Garwoods I think it's interesting that some of the roller fairlead mounts are aluminum and some are iron.

 

[gringeltaube]

........ All things considered though, it should be fine as it's not a hard pull IF the winch is being operated correctly. It's probably some diecast POS that WILL break sooner or later though.......

Agree 100%. A good piece of forged/ tempered AL would perform well and prolly last forever.
Still wondering if this (the OP's) AL handle was a "prehistoric" version of some kind...?

moriboy: is there a dataplate telling who the (re)manufacturer was??
Any other visual differences?

G.

 

[moriboy]

Here is a picture of the broken one. I'm sure it would have outlasted me, but I kicked it when climbing around trying to do a valve adjust. I'll look and see if the data plates have any readable info, they are pretty beat up and faded.