Windlass Maintenance - Lewmar

[abl1111]

My Lewmar 600 Horizon windlass just died.

After I disassembled, I found that the motor was shot. I mean fried ! I'm not sure if it was from water damage - there was some rust in the housing, or if there was an electrical/heat problem..

It is an expensive motor to replace ! Trust me. I installed a new motor and all is well.

I have some advice:

Check your windlass switch for corossion. Mine looked like sh*t. All the contacts were corodded - this may have been my problem which may have caused a short and then over heating which fried the motor.

Also, I will be removing the face plates of my unit every few years to inspect for water intrusion. It's a hassle, but probably worth it.

Lastly, I had to remove the whole unit from my deck. I was very surprised to see that water had found it's way through the Life Caulk (polysulfide) I used (7) years ago to mount/seal the unit to the deck - water found it's way into the bolt holes through my deck - think wet core. As we SC owners are very sensitive to this - it's something you should check out. There was no damage or at least minimal. I wanted to do the over-size drill/ epoxy /re-drill thing, but because I did not have the original template to re-drill the windlass holes - I opted for a very thick layer of 3M Marine Grade silicone ( as Lewmar recommended ) - let skin, then tightened. I would have liked to do the epoxy-thing ( and, I recommend it ), but I wanted to finish the job.

Hope this helps someone down the road...