Hey all. Recently got a Superwinch LT3000 for an old ('90) Yamaha Moto 4 350, but I'm sorry to say it's been almost nothing but trouble since I got it. I'm assuming it wasn't designed to fit a Moto 4 (or the Moto 4 wasn't supposed to be capable of mounting a winch) so to mount it I welded a steel plate to the bumper and the winch mount plate is bolted to that. The only possible difference I could see from mounting it this way is the the winch is upside-down, but everything else remains, according to the instruction manual as far as I can tell, as it should.

This is my first winch for anything, but I wouldn't think that having it upside-down would make any kind of difference. However, yesterday was the second time the wire rope began to wind outside of the drum, against the motor chassis, requiring about 20 minutes of fiddling and cursing to get undone and chewing up everything in the process. I can't find anything on something similar happening and as far as I can tell I'm not doing anything wrong when spooling up. It looks like the bottom of the winch drum has more space around it than the top, but I see no reason for this as everything is stock in regards to the winch. I also don't see any way to fix that.

Any input on this would be very appreciated. I don't want this to be one of those problems that no one's ever heard of that I seem to be lucky enough to repeatedly have.

 

Did you mount a fail-lead with the winch? The fail lead helps guide the cable onto the winch drum.

 

Yep, the one it came with. The side rollers are directly in line with the very edge of the drum. The only other thing that I could think of is the cable is too long unless it wraps perfectly around the spool it can make it over the sides of the spool. Still, everything's stock, and I'm reluctant to cut away my rope.



I'm starting to become convinced that the problem is just bad luck combined with minimum engineering.

 

you need to keep quite a bit of tension on the cable when running it in or it builds up and will run over i got an uncle that had the same prob with a milemarker winch i finally put a synthetic rope on it to stop his bitchin seems fine now

 

It would seem that not having enough tension was at least a contributing factor. Respooling the entire length of rope with the weight of my car on a slope seemed to have wound everything much tighter and neater. There's just no way I would be able to match that kind of weight in actual use though. Even if stuck in mud halfway up the tires, I don't think I could come close to that kind of weight with the quad and rider.

Regardless I cut about 15 feet off of the cable (which also removed a few kinks and frays) so now even if it wraps sloppily it doesn't look like it would come close to being able to wrap over the sides of the drum.

Thanks guys.



It's kind of ironic how ever since this thing's been installed it's been near impossible to accidentally get stuck to the point I would need to use it. Before I had it just hitting a few inches of snow wrong would require 15 minutes of hard physical work to get the quad going again.