Harken electric winch failing

P

psousa

Well-Known Member
Joined
30 Mar 2015
Messages
87
Visit site
I have a electric H40 winch installed on my Beneteau O37. It's used to hoist the main sail.
These days I start listening it to fail, I mean, slowing down, after few seconds hoisting the main sail. Last week completely failed (slowed down until stops) when almost all the main sail was on the top. After stop the winch motor does not answer to the buttons pushes anymore. Looks like dead.
My battery bank is getting weak and at that time I had only 11,5-11.9 volts, as far as I can remember, so I thought it was about that. Following night, the boat was connected to shore power, charging, but when I returned next day the winch was still dead. Few hours after being on the boat that day, I tried it again and... it works perfectly... don't know how! I did nothing but the winch motor starts working again.
2 days ago the winch failed again while in the water (I use it every single day). Still dead after 2 night recharges.
I've sent an email to Harken asking them where should I start to check but they where helpless. They wrote me something like "it could be the control box (solenoid) (...) it could be the motor, the gear box, or both"... great! Something I didn't know.

I appreciate some help guys. What or where should I start to check?

Is the black box with 3 red wires connected, on the picture, the winch control box/solanoid? It says "battery isolator" and it's close to the battery charger, battery breakers and also the electric winch and anchor winch breakers.

Also, are those relays/40amp breaker from the winch circuit? 40a is too much, right? Probably is not. And does electric winches uses relays for any reason?

Thanks in advance.




 
I've two electric 46ST of early nineties vintage. One failed a few years ago with very similar symptoms and I got it repaired last year.

Anyway, before I recount that story the obvious thing to check is the connections. Even a small issue could lead to a large voltage drop. So worth monitoring with a voltmeter in use. I actually connected up an LED voltmeter across the motor terminals but have since removed it.

Anyway, the failure of mine was caused by water ingress. I was getting full voltage at the terminals but the common negative was open circuit. The seals in the winch had gone and water had built up on top of the gearbox. Eventually the gearbox seal went and water got into the gears then motor. The obvious symptom was corrosion around the terminal post.

I took motor and gearbox off (involved a bit of blood, sweat and if not tears then the build up of a large overdraft at the swear box) and took it to an electrical workshop, who relieved me of a large amount of money (small though by Harken standards) mainly to rebuild the gearbox.
 
Found the problem!
One of the poles on the main winch breaker is broken. That’s why the intermittent connection :-/
I would love to find one of these so I will keep the aesthetic... do you know where to buy them?



Bypassing the breaker works perfectly but I will not use it without the breaker because the breaker was triggered often when the winch was working overloaded, hoisting the main sail, so it has a role on the procedure... need to find a replacement!
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Other threads that may be of interest

B
How does a tacho get RPM and engine-hours data, and how to fix faulty readings?
Replies
16
Views
455
Babylon
B

Share this page

Top