I have an older Neilson (NZ) electric anchor winch that spins but had no power at all to 'lift' the chain. Any ideas on where to start?

I personally would dismantle the electric motor and have a good look at the brushes and armature perhaps the brushes are sticking in the brush holders . and give the motor a good service clean the armature where the brushes run it may have had water inside at some stage,
another maybe be the solenoid contacts also check all your terminals
If you use emery tape to clean the segments then clean between the copper segments .I used to use a ground down hack saw blade maybe be replace the two bearings while is apart ( cheap metric bearing from your local bearing shop most are 6 series bearings)
make sure the brushes slide in the brush holders and clean her up and reassemble below is a basic DC motor

Trek said..


If you mean it spins with no load (no chain) but cant lift when there's a load (chain on) look at how thick/good the wiring is back to the boats batteries. If they are a higher resistance then what they should be that would cause the problem.

As a test you could get a car battery and take it up to where the winch is and connect the battery directly to the winch with jumper leads or thick wires of some kind and see how it goes. ie. bypass the sus wiring/relays or whatever.

not sure on resistane, but wireing is quite 'thick' up to winch - similar to jump leads sort of thickness?

I had a similar situation and it was a broken/sheared key in the drive shaft. An easy cheap fix.