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Unread 11-01-2004, 19:26
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Frank(Aflak) Frank(Aflak) is offline
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Re: How Does a Winch Work?

The van door motor has a worm gear built onto it. The thing about worm gears is that they cannot be backdriven, so it will accomplish the same thing that a ratchet would . . . except you can reverse direction with it, which you could not do with a ratchet unless you had a servo-powered release mechanism.

I don't know the specs for the van door, but I would assume that it has enough torque after the worm gear transmission to directly power a winch that can lift 130lbs . . if the spool diameter is small enough, anyway.

I'll look into that.
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