vas
Well-known member
Lofrans Tigres windlass restoration [was gipsy gone...]
morning all,
on the MiTos delivery trip thread I did mention that on the first day windlass died on me when chain got tangled in the store and wouldn't come out. Following gipsy and rope drum was freespinning and windlass would run freely, gipsy not engaging.
Had a go last afternoon with the "help" of the kids and undid (with a lot of hammering I may say) the wingnut and removed the gipsy and the shove gipsy. Yep, I'm confident of the terminology since I have the exploded diagram from Lofrans with me
Windlass is a Lofrans Tigres 24V 1200W, 70ies vintage.
Gipsy chain wheel looks like it'd seen better days and will probably need replacement as it looks like this from the inner clutch side:
you can spot in the detail photo the allaround hairline crack:
the outer side of the gipsywheel has a minute crack nicely symmetrical around:
Lightly sanded it with 90emery, cleaned it, sprayed lithium grease (sorry the only one I had available) and Angelos re-fitted it:
To the conclusion, the thing now works! I understand that a set of seals and a gipsy wheel are in order for an overhaul during winter.
Could anyone explain what happened on the delivery trip? I mean clutch slipped and somehow broke loose until I retightened it? Makes sense to anyone?
NOTE that when it was slipping it was both the chain gipsy AND the rope drum slipping! Now they are both locking and working properly.
Checking on the diagram, I cannot see how it is possible to do that without some internal damage, unless I have a selfhealing windlass...
I'm helping some good friends on a small yachting race tomorrow (typical 3 buoy thing within the bay), I'll be acting as the leadoff ship with the jury onboard and I need to anchor at around 20m. Hope the chain will come out and I wont have to manually retrieve 50+m of the thing later on
V.
morning all,
on the MiTos delivery trip thread I did mention that on the first day windlass died on me when chain got tangled in the store and wouldn't come out. Following gipsy and rope drum was freespinning and windlass would run freely, gipsy not engaging.
Had a go last afternoon with the "help" of the kids and undid (with a lot of hammering I may say) the wingnut and removed the gipsy and the shove gipsy. Yep, I'm confident of the terminology since I have the exploded diagram from Lofrans with me
Windlass is a Lofrans Tigres 24V 1200W, 70ies vintage.
Gipsy chain wheel looks like it'd seen better days and will probably need replacement as it looks like this from the inner clutch side:

you can spot in the detail photo the allaround hairline crack:

the outer side of the gipsywheel has a minute crack nicely symmetrical around:

Lightly sanded it with 90emery, cleaned it, sprayed lithium grease (sorry the only one I had available) and Angelos re-fitted it:

To the conclusion, the thing now works! I understand that a set of seals and a gipsy wheel are in order for an overhaul during winter.
Could anyone explain what happened on the delivery trip? I mean clutch slipped and somehow broke loose until I retightened it? Makes sense to anyone?
NOTE that when it was slipping it was both the chain gipsy AND the rope drum slipping! Now they are both locking and working properly.
Checking on the diagram, I cannot see how it is possible to do that without some internal damage, unless I have a selfhealing windlass...
I'm helping some good friends on a small yachting race tomorrow (typical 3 buoy thing within the bay), I'll be acting as the leadoff ship with the jury onboard and I need to anchor at around 20m. Hope the chain will come out and I wont have to manually retrieve 50+m of the thing later on
V.
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