Lewmar Winch Spindle Tooth Deformation

[tgsail1]

Mike- I have the same problem on my winch. How did you get the spindle out?
T

[rmbrown]

Unmount it and drop it out the bottom, I'm afraid.  Good news is that it's easier to clean the winches off the boat anyway.  Kind of messy if it's been a while.

On mine, at least, the two 30STs on the cabintop seem to have captive nuts or tapped plate glassed in.

The 46STs are a bit more painful because the nuts are loose, on mine at least.  Three can be reached from the cockpit easily.  Two are inside an inspection port over the aft cabin bed.  Two are accessible via the lazarette but made easier if you have two elbows in one arm.

[KWKloeber]

Mike, you need a small; human.

More seriously.   Was the boat raced extensively; you know those east shore gales.  If you do the math on the sail plan, I'd suspect that a 30 and a 46 are barely on the cusp.  But sad to report, on production boats a size larger winch means fewer boat sales in Frank's file cabinet.  So it's a trade-off whether the boat is day-sailed on an inland lake versus near shore raced 3x a week.

Do yours have Philips head machine screws on the caps?  At the end of the run of wavegrips there may have been some production issues, who knows. If they have Philips, they are closer to end rather than beginning stock.

Your options:

Clean them up and drive them into the ground; replace when they go south.

Lewmar also produces "race" winches  -- you wouldn't know the difference from appearance.  One difference was a better high-end spindle.
Would you want two for your 30s?  There probably aren't any left around for the 46s, but could try to locate 'em.  The cost would be the same as the old OEM spindle.
They would last you **forever**.

-k

[rmbrown]

I had small humans but like puppies and kittens, they grew up!

My boat was raced and cruised.  I'm not sure how hard he raced but he raced often.

Mine do indeed have 4 Philips screws on top.

I'll clean up and install this weekend, I suppose.

I'll PM you about the replacement spindles.

[Jon W]

Finally got back to servicing my Wave Grip series winches and fixing the problem with the feeder arm rotating because the slot for the collet had worn wider through the years.

With a dremel and a metal cutting disc, the new 15001431 collet is very easy to modify to fit the slot in the center stem. A couple photos attached of the old and new modified collets side by side, and the new ones installed to check the screw holes line up. Problem solved.

[rmbrown]

Nice!