My winch seems to be "free spooling" under load. It slowly unwinds when I have my plow in the raised position (less than 100 lbs. of load). The cable is wound tightly on the drum so it's not cable slack that's causing this. Needless to say this can cause a dangerous situation should the plow lower itself when I'm driving at speed.

The winch is a differential planetary type with a mechanical and dynamic brake (similar to a Superwinch). Is this a common problem with these types of winches or did I just get a bad winch?

Thanks

 

If it has a mechanical brake and it is not holding the plow up something is wrong with it. Even the dynamic brake should hold the plow up, my warn winch has no problem. The mechanical brake will hold the atv off the ground if you wanted it to.

 

If you are using one of the $120 EBAY winches like I am then thats your problem. I was broke and needed a wich desperatly so I bought one of those cheap winches and I have got what I paid for. My winch unwinds an inch a minute while its raised and I am moving. I was also having a problem in the summer when sometimes it would not wind in, I would hear the relay clicking, I would have flip the handlebar switch back and forth 20 times to get it to work. The problem eventually cleared up.

 

if it is a mechanical brake try winding your cable on in the other direction

 

A word of caution: You may not have a Warn winch, but Warn said to NEVER wind with a load in the opposite direction. Their gears are designed to pull in one direction only.

 

my point was that it may be on wrong in the first place

 

Sounds like your winch doesn't have a brake in it. I can't say it is because you have a cheap winch because my 2,000 Warn did the same thing. I had to install the $70 gear from the Warn 2.5 and now it works great.