Hi everyone, now that I have a bit of time on my hands with with tropical cyclone Narelle closing in, I thought i would post a few pictures of the winch I made. 

It's a BA ford starter motor with matching flex plate, originally I was going to use a reduction starter but my younge bloke has this laying around so thought I would try it. Turns out it works fine! When it starts failing I'll use a reduction motor instead of rebuilding the existing one. I've had it on for a couple of months now and hasn't missed a beat, pulls the boat up in 20 seconds (using the lower gearing on the winch due to size of starter. Can still pull the trailer under the boat when beach retreating, not sure on time as just did it as a test)

On top of the tree is a switch with a rubber boot to activate the winch, i also wired in a DC garage remote relay so I can also use the set-up remotely (waterproof remote, I can post pictures and part numbers if anyone is interested as it took a bit of research)

The garage remote relay can handle 10A from memory, so i decided to install a 30A fused relay to take the load. I installed a 200A water proof circuit breaker with 50m2 wire for the motor, and a 100A mini isolator for the spigot trigger wire. I did it this way so when pulling the winch rope out for boat retrieval, you have the 200A circuit breaker off. In doing this you can hit the button on the remote throwing the spigot out, stopping the flex plate when you have enough rope out.

I made the shroud out of some mild steel sheet I had laying around, and is held in place with two M8 blots and thread serts. Pretty solid and takes seconds to remove.

It's all run off a battery that has a quick connection for charging. Inside the battery box is 5mm plate & rubber that thread bar goes through down to angle bar to secure everything. I am pretty remote so basically used what I had in the shed, all in all I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Total cost was around $350 ( mosty wiring & relays) 

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