Photos needed. Shed full of S**t Auction

[Tony Wheeler]

Originally Posted by Tony Smith

If it pivots about the chassis rail, then the drive gear could be withdrawn from the Low Ratio position and re-inserted in the High ratio position.

That would be one solution Tony, another one would be to make the post itself removable, and have two separate locating positions on the chassis rail, eg. short piece of box section for it to slide into, with a simple locking pin.

Either way though it would explain the redesign from the early version where the post appears to be fixed vertically on the bumper bar, or at best, hinged at the base with a locking pin hole in the brace plate for high ratio position. Perhaps they found this arrangement was not robust enough in high ratio, which being only 4:1 would require considerable force on the crank handle. And of course if it was indeed fixed vertically, then they would quickly discover in trials that 16:1 was impractical in most situations, and certainly impractical for winding in loose cable.

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Either way I think you're onto something Tony because if you look at the 9th Div jeep winch you'll notice the drive gear is at least half way out, which indicates they haven't pushed it back in far enough for the Dawn locking pin to engage:

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This is something I do myself routinely on my Dawn No. 5 winch, purely through laziness when changing ratios. It's not necessary to engage the locking pin, but of course when I go for a spin around the backyard the handle sometimes falls out, and next time I need to use the winch I have to search for it in the long grass! In the case of the jeep that can't happen, and since you'd be changing ratios repeatedly you wouldn't bother with the Dawn locking pin each time, it would just be an unnecessary nuisance.

Whatever the case in practice though, the fact that the drive gear is so far out in this photo tells us the entire shaft is removable, which can only be for the purpose of changing ratios. That would make this winch infinitely more practical.

I suspect the shaft attachment only looks complex because they've retained the Dawn handle mounting parts, it's possibly just a piece of box section or channel enclosing them and welded to the long shaft. However I'm not sure why they'd retain those parts, rather than simply join the two shafts with a welded sleeve. Perhaps they wanted to maintain the integrity of the Dawn handle mount for interchangeability purposes, esp. for the first batch which must be considered a trial mod only. Given that these winches were used elsewhere in standard form it would make sense not to ruin them for those applications, at least not until the jeep mod was fully proven in the field. Even then it would still make sense not to ruin them if possible.

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[Tony Wheeler]

Just to clarify, these are the Dawn locking pins I'm on about. You can see the drive gear is fully home when the locking pin is engaged, as opposed the 9th Div jeep where it is partially out:

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These pins are spring loaded and will engage automatically when you push the drive gear in, but only if they're well lubricated. If they're dry of lubricant like my high ratio locking pin they will jam and hold the drive gear partially out, just like a sticky door lock plunger jams on the striker plate. However it's actually much better that way because you don't have to disengage them when changing ratios, which would be even more of a nuisance on the jeep because you'd have to reach over to do it. The only reason I lubricated my low ratio locking pin is because the handle kept falling out when I did laps around the back yard. That can't happen on the jeep, so once the locking pins got a bit sticky through mud and dirt and water etc. you'd leave them that way deliberately.

Thinking further on the shaft attachment I don't believe you could weld it solid with such a long shaft, you'd need some movement in the joint to allow for the inevitable misalignment due to the moveable post, and also as the chassis flexes. That being the case they've probably gone about it in the simplest way possible, using the existing Dawn parts rather than designing and fabricating new parts.

Anyway nice work Tony, you've convinced me it was designed for high and low ratio use. As such I'm even more impressed with this jeep mod, maybe I'll stick the Dawn No.5 on the front of my F15A!