And install on the Tahoe pontoon winter projects, it’s getting to be fall here and one of the things that we wanted to fix was this. You know: ram 1600, pound winch, that’s on the front of this boat. This is a tri tuned pontoon and it runs on. You know two sides of basically carpeted bunk granted I wish. We were in the saltwater area and I could get the plastic bunk guards on.

But that’s not a possibility up here, and this winch completely is failed, not by me alone, but even by previous. It’s um. It’s made for sixteen hundred pounds, but when you put it in the water on the shallower lakes- and you try to work with it, it just you know, struggles to get it up and unless you’re motoring, your your pontoon all the way up onto those bunks, it’s just taking its toll.

It’s it’s cut the line and dump the plate and and just made things kind of a mess. So the only thing I can say folks is time to invest in better just better quality. All the way around I think some of these trailer companies just throw a sixteen hundred pound winch on it, just because they can. This pontoon obviously weighs several thousand pounds, so it could use a bigger winch either way.

So we went and got a when these fulton winches. This is the f2. It’s a two-stage winch, the material is quite hefty. It’s it’s aluminum based. It’s got a much better, lock down on the bottom of it. It’s got a center one and you’re supposed to put two bolts in on the back, which is much better than the one that the previous one had so I do have to drill through the plate and make some changes in the plate so that this can fit the plate on this trailer is actually a plate underneath and then a plate on top.

So, as you can see, I left one bolt in it to hold the bottom plate in place so that I can drill through both it wants to make the holes line up. You notice there’s some scratches on this again, that’s from their previous winch. It had it torqued itself up so badly coming. The last foot, or so of distance when, when pulling up the pond – and that it just wasn’t holding up- and we got this thing drilled out and then the next step believe it or not, is gonna, try and protect it.

You know, even though we’re not in the saltwater environment, you know, rust is rust in Minnesota has plenty of it. These shallow little lakes aren’t perfect. Sometimes their water is a little bit more alkaline or acidity based, so we’re gonna touch it up. So we got some touch-up paint for the trailer and we’ll get this get this baby all touched up.

I want to make sure that it just doesn’t start rusting right away. So as long as it’s fresh metal time to fix it and it worked out really good. We put the touch-up paint on first and then we painted the whole thing with the top coat, and then we bolt this bad boy on and, as you can see it bolts on quite nicely it’s it’s got a three bolt pattern which I snugged with a hand wrench at first the directions do tell you to torque it down and they give you torque specs.

So out came the torque wrench and will will torque it to the spec they want, so that it holds I really like how this one bolts on again, where the torque is in the back of the winch and there’s two great big bolts back there to help hold that down, and then, of course, here’s one on the front to keep it. You know from going right or left has a really nice.

You know cable on it, so to speak. The process I like is that it’s got a nice thick bar metal, not just a bolt going through it, that’s kind of flimsy. It’s got a bar metal that comes in and pinches it between another bar metal and then, when you rotate it around. It just tightens up like a mule that makes the strap so much tighter and stronger and you’re, not relying on basically a nut and an end of a bolt to hold itself into place.

You’re relying on a bar and if you notice that bar is about a half inch thick, the previous one had about a quarter of an inch thick bolt through it. It wasn’t even a real, strong, graded bolt so real pleased with how this is going and working. The next step is, is you know wind the strap up in it again? This is a two-stage, so you can wind it slower or faster.

It does have a reverse I, really like that. I’ve actually taken it out a couple times here. This fall just to use the wind. She get the feel of it again, I normally motor all the way up to about the last foot or two due to the shallow water and then crank it down with the winch, and this thing really does a good job. I always crank it’s straight in at first and then I put the strap through the bottom and pull it down to the trailer for travel and, as you can see, I have it in the travel position here and it’s it’s nice and tight I brought this on and off the pontoon now three times with the new inch and never had any movement or problems with it and never had to struggle appreciate you watching folks.

This is a great boat. Winch I hope you like it please like and subscribe, show great support for her channel. Thank you.

All right, well the project for tonight on the front of this boat trailer you folks that have subscribed already you’ve seen this trailer in other videos we did well. We did bunk boards in one video I just finished up the wiring video, where we wired up tail lights and you folks that haven’t subscribed yet go ahead and click that subscribe button. You will get to catch up on whatever else we might do to this thing, and once we get it done, you can see the boat sitting out there on stands.

We’re gonna put the boat on the trailer and we’re gonna back it in here. We’re gonna be doing a lot of work on that boat, so click that subscribe button you get to see all them. Videos, the winch that we’re going to be using I’ve ordered this off of amazon. It was a pretty good deal and I don’t have any experience with these reefs. Winches I’ve mounted cable winches on a couple of John boat trailers that I’ve done over the years and I’ve used 40 foot, cable winches on the front of some two of those and that work out really slick.

But on this one we got a good deal on this. So we’re gonna put this on the front. It already has some mounting holes so hopefully we’ll be able to just bolt it right on alright, well, open top of the boxes up and comes out in two pieces, so the winch and handle er need to be assembled, got the instructions here, I’ll I’ll, look through them a little bit, but it looks like basically comes with some cardboard packing stuff. There’s a Teflon nut on here and looks like it’s gonna, be a pretty simple assembly here as I say that I won’t be able to do it one hand, so I’m gonna go ahead and I’m gonna go ahead and double check the instructions and make sure this is what I’m supposed to do.

But I’m pretty sure this is what I’m supposed to do. Okay, I’m looking at the diagrams here in the book and there’s nothing on that shaft. Besides there’s a lock nut hold the handle on. That’s it so I tightened it down with a wrench and we’re gonna go ahead and it didn’t come with any hardware. Luckily, I’ve got kind of a selection of bolts over there, but we’re gonna go ahead and set it up. Err on the trailer and get a look at it hope you hear that Rumble, the train’s coming I live right, close to a railroad track and a couple times a day.

We get the train coming through here, just looking at the holes on that plate, they line up pretty good with the holes under this winch, so I think it’s going to be just as simple as bolting that on I’m gonna use some 3/8 inch bolts. Well, the train just moved on through I got this thing mounted up it’s pretty simple again: I use the three inch bolts and there’s two of them in there that one in the back was kind of hard to get to just with my fat hands and stuff I used, the hemostats I use those a lot.

I got a couple of different sizes for just this sort of stuff, so I just clamped on the end of that, you know on the end of the bolt and just dropped it in the hole there. I got curious as to how long this winch strap was so I stretched. It all the way out it’s sewn on here, so you can’t hardly pull it out. I guess it’s sewn on here and I pulled it out and measured it with a tape. Measure I’m not gonna, do that, while I’m holding the camera, because I only got two hands and it was 19 feet, roughly 19 feet and 8 inches from the end of the winch.

So I give you guys an idea if you’re looking at this winch. This is what model is this a model number 7 4 3 2 9 up here in the corner, the 1500 pound, trailer winch by Reese, no power, 7, 4, 3, 2 9 again is the number up here in the corner too. So that’s all I got guys. Hopefully, I helped you with this one. If I did click that thumbs up button. If you want to see more videos, like guess me, working on this sort of stuff click that subscribe button and until the next video guys keep on tinkering.