[Peter Matteson]

Originally Posted by Kevin Sevcik

See, we too were thinking along these lines last year. The problem is that any of these mechanisms that we found would lock under load whether by design or lack thereof. To the former, I'm absolutely certain that the freewheel on an auto winch is designed to lock under load. Or, at the very least, be very difficult to release under load. Imagine the consequences if you could easily bump the freewheel while using the winch to lift/tow/pull something.

This can be fixed by "re-working" the mechanism. We made a compact shoulder out of a modified winch in 2005 and never had a problem once we worked it over. It cost us $70 and we had to machine 2 parts (motor mount and input shaft) to get it to work. It's a cheap solution that you can make work with minimal effort if look around.