Posted by Clint Dixon on Saturday, September 14, 2002 at 11:31PM :
In Reply to: About that Ramsey... posted by Cheyenne Dave in St,Louis on Saturday, September 14, 2002 at 7:33PM :
Good question. The winch is not reversable. How about this:
You want to use the winch for loading and unloading vehicles from your trailer, right? How about using it like a capstan winch. Get one of those new braided nylon winch ropes that advertise in the popular four-wheel-drive magazines. The Ramsey has a good long drum on it so you can get a lot of wraps on one layer. Don't attach the rope to the drum. Just hook it up to the vehicle to be moved and wrap it several times around the drum. The drum just turns inside the loose coils of the rope until you manually pull on the free end of the rope to tighten it to the drum so it can then get a grip on the rope. Release your pull on the free end of the rope when you want the motion of the vehicle to cease. Your drum can always turn the same direction. You just wrap the rope accordingly as to which operation you want to perform, spool or unspool. Of course, unspooling to unload a vehicle from the trailer, you would want to keep tension on the rope at all times to keep the vehicle from "running away".
Works in theory. Another option would be an electric motor to drive the winch input shaft. One that can be reversed through silenoids. Winch only runs when your finger is on the switch.
That is all of the hard sell I have tonight.
Clint