M1078A1 Self Recovery Winch stuck in Engaged

[Lostchain]

Has anyone experienced the situation where their winch will not "free-wheel" ? I have gone through all the troubleshooting TMs for the A0 truck (haven't gotten ahold of A1 TMs yet) and none of them deal with a clutch malfunction. Best I can find is the parts diagram, but I cant really see from that how the clutch shifter mechanism actually works.

When I first got the truck, it was in "Disengaged" and the drum could free-wheel. The first time I moved it to engaged, the lever was a little sticky at the mid-point, but then eventually swung over to Engaged. The winch operates fine, however moving the lever back to Disengaged has no effect, and doesn't actually feel like its doing anything. I have tried yanking on the winch cable with my golf cart to see if that would motivate it loose, but no luck. I am going to try spraying some penetrating oil on the shifter lever shaft just as a hail mary, hoping I don't have to tear the whole winch apart.

 

[coachgeo]

just for shiats and grins I did a net search for "Hydraulic winch stuck engaged" thinking the concepts in winch designs are similar... . surprisingly couple things came up. Maybe try that and review the results and see if any may point you in the direction that helps? Might try the same search but add "military"??

 

[Ronmar]

There is a complete exploded view of the winch in the 24P manual. It looks like a multi-layer motorcycle clutch. The lever rotates a cam against a plate that compresses the discs. The first thing I would check is if the cam is rotating With the lever, the two are pinned together. If it is, you could start with giving the assembly a few good wacks between lever and hydraulic motor with the lever in the disengaged position. You could also try deadheading the winch with the lever set to disengaged and see if that frees them up…

 

[Lostchain]

There is a complete exploded view of the winch in the 24P manual. It looks like a multi-layer motorcycle clutch. The lever rotates a cam against a plate that compresses the discs. The first thing I would check is if the cam is rotating With the lever, the two are pinned together. If it is, you could start with giving the assembly a few good wacks between lever and hydraulic motor with the lever in the disengaged position. You could also try deadheading the winch with the lever set to disengaged and see if that frees them up…

Funny you should mention this, I had observed the diagram that looked like motorcycle wet clutches and thought maybe they were just glued together from lack of use. So I WD-40ed the lever and went to town around the clutch area with a big rubber mallet.
Drum was still hung up so I hooked the ole Kubota up to the winch and had the wife pay out the cable from inside the cab while I tensioned the cable with the kubota in reverse. Did a couple of cycles of dragging the kubota , whacking with mallet, and then paying it out and Got to about 75’ and then the cable started free-wheeling again! Went ahead and drug most of the cable out in free-wheel and then drug the kubota back the whole way in Engaged mode. When I got pretty much all the way back, I tested Disengage mode and it was still a little sticky, so I repeated a few more times and now it works like a charm!

Also, I did confirm that on my A1 if you are in drive when you engage the winch, it does not rev up the engine but it still turns on the PTO and you can use the winch. I was wondering that after watching an A0 video of the owner doing that.

 

[Green Mountain Boys]

If you grab the drum with one hand and the disengage/engage lever in the other, while moving the lever from disengage to engage, rotate the drum with your hand a little. It helps the movement of the lever. It sounds like it was just a little bound up from sitting. My suggestion will help even now that you have it free.
You have nice green grass. I have not seen the ground in a while and our grass is sure not green.