My shocking windlass...

[Peregrine1983]

I have a massive, old Simpson Lawrence windlass on my boat that may be original (pic below, sorry for the foot). Looks like it came off a steamship. It still works great, except I've noticed that if I touch the steel casing of the windlass while I'm cranking up the anchor I get light shocks. Obviously something is not right. Any thoughts?

[transmitterdan]

What voltage powers the windless? Is it a 2 wire or 3 wire motor?

My "guess" is that some insulation has failed and the case is connected (maybe intermittently) to one of the power leads. Combine that with bad brushes and you have a pretty good Van De Graff generator. If the brushes are not making good contact the back EMF can be higher than the supply voltage. It can be shocking.

Make sure it's wired right and investigate the pain and agony of replacing the internal insulated wires and the brushes. There are also some plastic insulators that support the brushes. Possibly one is these is cracked allowing current to leak into the casing.

[Peregrine1983]

Thanks transmitterdan. Very interesting. Your questions made me realize how little I know about this thing. I know it's 12v, but that's where my knowledge stops.

I'll see about the wiring and if I can open it up to peek inside. It appears to be one solid hunk of steel bolted through the deck, so I imagine I can only access the innards from underneath. I'm not on the boat now, so I'll check tomorrow AM.

I imagine that barring finding a loose hot wire inside that's touching the case, disassembling the motor may be a nightmare.