Wilson sliding wiches.....
 

Well Tracer.....

Now that you've got almost a full winter under your belt with that new trailer, how do you like the winch track?

:)

I don't like them. They have been scratching the trailer side from Day 1. Plus my dropdeck is pretty low, so all the road dirt flies right onto them. I was actually thinking about this just today - if I were to buy another trailer, I'd make sure it has 'n' shaped rails for winches, so that when they slide no damage is done to the sides of the trailer. All our flatbed trailers at MacKinnon have this setup. The make is Load King, I think ... Wilson makes a great trailer but for some reason they decided to go cheap with the winch rails ;)

I'm pretty happy with the winch track on my east trailer. The winches slide very easy but the "flats" do not. Sometimes they need a bit of pounding. Have to make sure the track is washed good every time I take it to the truck wash.

On a side note, I just had two boxes put on. To do this they had to remove all the winches and reorganize them. Both they and I forgot to realize the winches have a small locking mechanism that needs to be on the outside otherwise the winch is useless. Sure enough, three of them have the locking mechanism on the inside! Luckily they're not on the drivers side between the boxes, otherwise a box would have to come off.

Instead, the front wheels have to come off in order to get them off.

Uh-huh. This time of year you hafta beat on them with the winch bar to "slide" them.

Let's do something about this. I'm going to email Trailers Canada and get Bruce to send me the email address of a design engineer at Wilson. I'll email him/her a link to this post - let them see what truckers like you and me think about the winches. I find too often trailer and truck engineers design stuff that looks nice on paper without giving a though to how the end user will be affected.

Between the 2 of us we have purchased how many trailers from Wilson??????? Last time I checked it was two LOL. I'm sure everyone else in the north country has the same problem though.

Yep. I love everything about my Wilson flatbed EXCEPT for the winches scratching the side of my trailer and getting iced in place. Ugh.

It's DONE. I just forwarded the link to this post (http://www.classadrivers.com/forum/o...ng-wiches.html) to the Ontario dealer where I got my Wilson RoadBrute. I asked him to forward this "feedback from the trenches" to the chief engineer at Wilson. Everybody, be nice now :)

Bandit and Tracer:

I find the "point" on the dogs are slightly rounded so the have a tendency not to grab into the teeth as well as the other winches where the dogs have a sharp point. I often find myself using my fingers to engage the dog before I let go of the winch bar. Or is it just me?

Also. I saw an interesting modification to a Wilson a few months ago. He converted over to standard (Kinnedyne?) winches by welding their winch track underneath.