Just bought a 90 pickup with a bush bar and winch on it which is great
But the winch is rusted and totally siezed up. Not so great

Anyone know how to free it up?

 

you'll have to take it off, take it apart, and clean it allll up REALLY good and replace what needs to be replaced, and go to tractor supply and get a BIG jug of PB blaster

 

i wonder if soaking it in CLR for a few days would do anything?

 

soak it in some aft.

 

what kind of winch?

most winches that are advertised as "fully rebuildable" like most Warns, you can pick up a rebiuld kit, and then just explode the hole thing and rebuild it, cleaning up the rusted parts with some sort of de-rusting agent as you go

 

Someone on here had posted that a 50/50 mixture of acetone and ATF are a good rust penetrant. Having zero experience with this, I can neither confirm nor deny this, but it could be a good place to start.

Just keep away from open flame or spark.

 

was bored at work this week and fixed my pocket bike, the chain was completely rusted.. got a litte tin of atf and filled it up and let it sit over night. works cherry again!

 

i use justice bros version of wd40 and soak it overnight

 

do itttttt.

just take all the electrical parts off first

and pics or it never happened. i kinda want to see HOW rusty this winch is?

 

lmao, I was JUST thinking the same thing...

 

wow, now i wanna see it too, or it doesn't exist.

 

In my experience, PB blaster works great. I buy it in cans because its pretty expensive and I usually use it on bolts, nuts etc. But it works great. Its specifically for rust, I use it in the oil field on our pumping units and its great. Smells funky and looks like red/brown hell but it penetrates great and will free it in no time, dont be afraid to be extremely generous on the parts though. Then get a rebuild kit like mentioned above

 

PB or ATf either one will work great, I figure it's done by now either way since the original post was in January...can't see how it would be rusted so bad it would need to be dunked in either just to get it apart for a rebuild though

 

yeah so whats the run down? any info on how this thing went to the OP

 

yeah i soaked mine in a 5 gallons of clr wd 40 and hit it with 30 pound sledge with wedged in the ground with 2 ft grade stakes lol for a month