Build Mother's $100 Winch... for $35!

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Weld four 1/8" X 2" X 2" X 3" angle-iron brackets to your winch's channel-iron base and drill 3/8" holes through them so you can bolt the hoist down so tightly that it'll never move under a load. Then take the whole unit outside, wash the whole unit down good with gasoline, and give it a couple of coats of a bright industrial paint.

After that it's a simple matter to slip a couple of rubber handgrips over the winch's bare metal handles. And just as easy to slide a V-belt into the pulley's groove, wrap it around the brake handle's lower bolt, and then hook the belt up over the handle's top bolt as shown. (Hold the V-belt in place by drilling two or three 1/8" holes through both sides of the loop and fastening a couple or three 5-44 X 1-1/4" bolts through the doubled rubber.

And finally: The 3/16" steel cable is permanently fastened to the winch's drum by passing it through two 1/4" holes drilled approximately one and a quarter inches apart in the "outside" drum end plate. Loop the cable through the holes as shown so that four inches or so of the braided and twisted wire lies on the drum .. . and then braze it firmly in place. The other end of the cable, of course, is formed into a loop and a hook is attached to it with standard cable clamps.

Bolt your winch down, hook the cable to anything that it'll hold, select a gear (including reverse—the most powerful that you'll use merely by cranking "the other way"), and "wind 'er up"! The ratchet and pawl will prevent the cable from suddenly paying out when you let go of the crank, and the brake can be hand operated (with lighter loads) merely by releasing the pawl.

If anyone has a better idea for a winch that [1] has several gear ratios for [2] under $35, we'd sure like to know about it. 'Cause, as far as we're concerned, there's not much you can do to improve this design . . . short of rigging up a motor drive for it!

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