Has anyone tried or had experience with an Atlas winch? I'm considering the 16,800 lb winch for my 10,000 lb truck. I can buy two of these for the price of one Warn 16,500. The Atlas has AOPS which is supposed to keep the winch from accruing damage.

 

No personal experience with their winches, but they make decent lifts that I've used.

 

Guess I'll have to be the guinea pig. If I buy one, I'll post my impressions.

 

7.3, do you have a thread for you ex build up? from the sounds of your rig in the sig, it sounds sick.

 

Yeah, there should be some posts about doing the suspension and steering conversions here on the FTE but most of the Cummins swap stuff is on the TDR.

 

Time to post an unfortunate update. First I'll say I had a year of reliable use from this winch while living in Alaska. I would have been in huge trouble a number of times without a working winch in very remote locations with snow averaging around 4 feet deep. However, I'm now unable to get this winch to work at all and am hoping for ideas that might get it working again.

The first winch I bought from gregsmithequipment.com was replaced even though I hadn't sent in the warranty papers, which for the most part made me satisfied. The company tried to figure out what was wrong over the phone and via email but I had to spend a lot of money mailing the winch back to them. Upon inspection it was trashed from only being tested, not even used. The new winch didn't work once when I needed it while 4 wheeling in Colorado, but worked again the next day and every time I needed it after that until recently.

I was pulling a Jeep stuck in sleet on the farm and using a ****** block and plenty of cable so the load was well under capacity. I always run the winch for only about a minute and stop a minute to wait for it to cool. I was using the wireless remote from in the vehicle where I was increasing voltage with the throttle pedal. The winch was working fine until after a minute long break it would just click and drop my batteries to an extremely low voltage without winching in or out with out without a load. I expected some sort of grounding out but have found no changes in the wiring.

At most I've since been able to get only a single rotation in either direction before the winch will stop. Once it stops I usually hear nothing more than a click when I depress the button on the remote. A couple times I heard a groaning sound. Cables do not feel hot and there are no signs of wires melting like with my first failed winch.

I've had my Optima yellow top batteries tested as well as my 300 amp alternator and they checked out fine. I've also tried another pair of Group 31 Optima yellow top batteries with no better results. I am unable to get the winch to spool the cable back in. I keep the cover on the winch when not in use so it is almost as clean as new. The lever still is as it always has been since new, very difficult to shift between engaged and free spool but it is pointing fully forward. I have always had to use the winch motor to spool out any cable as it is too stiff to spool out by hand. The cable is wound smooth and tight with no binding except for the 30 feet or so that won't spool back in and is wrapped around my grill guard.

I've been fortunate to get by for so long with such a cheap winch but this winch gets very little usage and should have lasted longer. I've had this winch on my truck almost exactly 3 years and have had to use it less than 2 dozen times if even that many. It is so odd to me that it was working as it should and then in the midst of use it quit. The fact that if I wait a couple minutes between tries and can get it to turn about 1 rotation makes me think it might be salvageable. I don't have the money for a WARN now but had I been able to forecast all of the troubles I've had with this winch I would have made the wiser investment. Any ideas that might get this winch working again?

 

Thats why you should never trust wenches. Sure its fun but they always **** you off before morning.

 

i would look closely at the remote control box.
i am always having problems with the solid state switcher boxes for the automatic tarps on the dump trucks. the electronics just cant handle the current that flows through them like the old multi solenoid switching boxes can.
the remote switcher box on the winch is basically the same thing.

 

Thanks for the tip. I'm handy at automotive wiring but not much of an electrician. How would I make any specific determinations?

 

remove the winch from the switcher box, reel out some cable to make sure it don't bind up, and hook the winch directly to battery power with a set of jumper cables. see if it works. if it does, it is the switcher. also do a current draw test to see how much current it draws unloaded, and loaded. it should not draw more than 200 amps loaded max. any more than that, and i would say the motor is shot. .

i prefer the dual solenoid box that the old ramsey winch used. the only thing i have to worry about with them is the nuts loosening up, but since i used star washers and a dab of semi permanent locktite, they have been good for 6 years now.

 

Running it for a minute or longer seems like an awful long time. Don't they just use starter motors? I've always heard that you shouldn't run it for more than 15-20 seconds at a time. I bought an ex forest service winch bumper that had that stenciled on it. It said "Use winch 15 sec, cool 1 minute". I've had a 9K tabor for about 6 years now, try to keep run times short and it's always worked for me. It does get aggravating on longer pulls though.

 

I made another attempt at getting the winch to work when my dad was able to help. We were able to get the winch to spool all of the cable back in, but it took about 40 minutes. It would winch in for a few seconds and then make a terrible grinding sound reminiscent of grinding transmission gears with a bad clutch. It would stop winching every time it made that noise. We'd then have to try to get it to winch out and then back in.

The noise and stopping occurred winching either direction. There is no way this winch could pull anything of serious weight. We simply kept weight on it by hand to get the cable to spool back on smooth.

I've never heard back from gregsmithequipment or Atlas. I've heard there is someone local who works on winches so that may be worth a try. There is not enough room to get jumper cables to the winch. I welded brackets to mount the roller fairlead partly so the winch could never be stolen. I had to cut and weld a second time when the first winch went bad so I can do it again but was hoping the winch could be repaired without removal.

Do these problems sound like anything indicative of a specific problem?

 

I have a warn M12000, that after a REALLY rough night of pulling A few years ago, it acted just like what you are describing. I pulled it off, then shipped it to warn. They repaired it, sent it back (free of charge) to me. When I asked what the problem was they said the spool was "tweaked" Due to the cable winding up in the same spot on the spool when pulling. said they just shaved off what was binding. Not sure if that is your problem, but might be something to look for. Best of luck to you.