Posted by john k. seidts on March 06, 1998 at 17:11:55:
I spent twelve years in the military, and I used a military vehicle winch for the first time on Sunday. I spent about four hours dragging the remains of a Ford GTB/S bomb truck out of the woods. I used the LU-4 winch on the M37 which I purchased the day before. I just had a few questions about the winch's operation.
We tried to drag the truck, but all four wheels were stuck. So we chained a single pulley onto the truck, ran the cable back to the lifting shackle on the M37, and ouila! it moved (with one wheel rolling). It took about 3 hours of moving from tree to tree, chaining the pintle to the bole for anchoring, before we got the truck far enough out to use the rollback winch.
My questions are this. The winch was hot when we were done, real hot. I know we didn't exceed 7500 lbs, as the vehicle didn't have an engine and was missing a bunch more hardware, and weighed in less than that by the manual. Can anybody give a short course in how to keep the winch from overheating, or if that is possible?
Also, I wanted to plug the rollback operator, Ray Fleetwood. Ray operates out of Chichester, PA, which is near Philadelphia. We started at 630 in the morning, and didn't finish until 1130 at night. He never complained once. His rates are reasonable, and he is interested in vintage construction equipment, so he sympathizes with all of us infected, affected, emotional iron addicts. And his rollback can carry two power wagons at once.
By the way, the M37 is a nice piece, which was advertised here on the Forum. I am going to use it to tow around my Carryalls and their parts to sandblaster and painting appointments in the Baltimore area.