After fitting them, I started removing the winches. If you remember I mentioned a while ago that the mounting bolts are rusty and in dire need of replacement.
Here's a picture:
Both sides are as bad as each other. You can see that a few of the nuts have corroded to almost nothing. Certainly its going to be a mission to remove them.
To remove the winch from the base you need to remove a spring circlip. To add insult to injury one of the circlips was so weakened by corrosion that it broke apart when I tried to remove it.
So a quick scan for Girdlestone Winches shows they went out of business a while ago, but luckily were bought by Barton and spares are still available. The downside is the spring clip only comes as part of a spares kit that includes the bearings, pawls and springs. A tad expensive just for a spring clip.
But I've swallowed the cost and after a bit of Googleing found somewhere that sells the kits a fiver less than anywhere else; that's a tenner saved, but the kits are still £20 each plus postage! So the order has just gone in for a couple of kits. Its still I think the biggest single expense I've laid out on the boat so far!
In the great scheme of things I might as well change the internals as some of the pawls are corroded and sticking. The bearings are nice and tight, but I can keep the old ones for spares.
So while I'm waiting for the parts to arrive I'll have to pay a visit to Sprite with the generator and my Dremel and set to cutting the nuts and bolts off. I'll fit stainless replacements and bed the winches down on sealant to stop water getting in.
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