HDJ81 JDM Electric Winch: Roller Fairlead should roll?

[podiev]

I have the JDM electric winch but not had the opportunity to use it on real-life situations (good thing!). I had the opportunity last week to play around with it while painting my bumber: it works basically. I still need to figure out though how to make it free spool.

However, I noticed that the rollers on the fairlead do not roll. I'm new to winches so I don't know if they are supposed to roll. Please see attached pic (circled in red). Are the horizontal and vertical rollers supposed to roll when the winch is in operation?

Because mine does not roll. If they are supposed to roll, what should I do? Does the inside of the rollers have bearings that I need to grease? Are mine just stucked?

 

[ForealBoreal]

they should roll when you have cable touching them (rolling over them)
if not you should grease them up and get them rolling

 

[ToyRoverlander]

They should roll. Do they have through-bolts in them with nuts to keep them in place? If so, you might want to loosen them up a bit.

 

[Adam B]

You might need to take it apart (remove the clips and pins) and get everything "rolling" again. You could freely spin all 4 of my rollers when I got the truck.

As for free-spooling the winch - when you're looking at it from the front there's a weird lever sticking up on the left side. If you push the round part of it down into the winch you can then make it rotate. Sometimes you need to wiggle the winch drum a bit while you're trying to do this. Once you're done pulling out cable just do the reverse to get it back out of free spool.

FYI, the winch comes with 150' of 5/16" wire cable. You can switch it to 100' of 3/8" synthetic if your cable looks anything like mine did (frayed and kinked every 20'). Of course then you won't need to fix the roller fairlead either.

 

[Tapage]

and for free spool your winch you need to move the lever to the left .. ? it's on your top of your gearbox .. ( winch gearbox )

 

[podiev]

thanks all for the input. Will check out the winch this weekend.