[EricH]

Originally Posted by Sperkowsky

the part where I am losing you is the drum. What do you mean by drum? Do you mean the small wheel connected to the motor.

Yep. Often for winches, that's a bit larger and drum-shaped.

I am starting to catch some sort of drift. will wrapping the cable around the moving wheel make it so theres tension to make it contact the wheel and actually move? Our imediate reaction was we needed something to make the wheel more grippy.

It's more of a "hold-in-place" on the wheel, giving it more cable to work with (having the same effect as a grippier wheel, theoretically). You'd have a tensioner (turnbuckles work well) elsewhere in the system and run a pretty tight cable for this trick to work, but it should be. Given that you've got a small(ish) wheel width-wise, you might be able to get away with 2 wraps.

I'm going to suggest following the procedure I posted earlier, with the cable not permanently terminated until you get the lift working reliably. It might take extra cable wraps or some grippy material or both, but it should give you some working room.