I ran into a situation where the winch was under load and I had to spool out. It had the weight of a 40 on the line, and it made some awful grinding noises while spooling out. I could not tell what it was coming from because I was in the cab, could have been the brake or gears?
Did you open the case and look at the condition of the gears before mounting?
My 8274 had very little lube left-maybe an ounce or two of funky brown organic sediment. Yours may just need some lube. Warn says 30 wt non-detergent, but I used gear lube since I had an open bottle on the shelf.
The only other thing I can think of is if the clutch mechanism is not fully engaged.
I did, But i did not rotate it too look at all of them. it seemed like there was 6oz of non-detergent in there but I could be wrong....It winches in perfectly fine, but grinds under load spooling out...
