My two coachroof winches had suddenly gone tight, so I serviced them last night.
Having stripped the first one, I carefully cleaned out all the old grease and then put new grease and oil in all the right places. I was checking for easy rotation at each stage of the reassembly. All was well until I screwed down the self-tailer, when it all went tight again. On investigation I found that the middle component was clogged with white powder (salt?) which caused it to bind on the jaws. A quick clean and a smear of grease and all was well.
All I did on the second winch was to strip, clean and grease the self-tailer. It is now absolutely perfect.
Moral: check the self-tailer before getting stuck in to all the more complicated and messy stuff. You might also save losing the odd spring or pawl that way
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