How does the Lewis Winch work?

The Lewis Winch is a simple device that magically transforms the high revolutions per minute (RPM) of a chainsaw engine into low-speed torque. This is necessary to make our portable winch powerful, and it works pretty much like the transmission in your car.

The Lewis Winch is designed to bolt on a chainsaw just like the cutter-bar bolts to your chainsaw. In fact, our portable winch uses the same two nuts as the cutter-bar, and it only takes a few minutes to switch back and forth from a cutter-bar to a Lewis Winch.

The sprocket on your chainsaw is replaced by the adaptor supplied with your new Lewis Winch, allowing the chainsaw output-shaft to drive the input-shaft on your portable winch.

The oil-filled gearbox (or transmission) on the Lewis Winch then transforms the high RPM of the chainsaw into low RPM torque that drives the Lewis Winch cable spool, which rolls up the cable and pulls in the load. It's that simple!

You can use any chainsaw to drive the Lewis Winch because we include in the box a Universal Adaptor Kit. Find the right adaptor for your chainsaw and then attach the Lewis Winch to it. You must anchor this portable winch to a solid object like a tree, a truck or a rock. Spool out some cable to the object you want to pull and fire up your chainsaw so the Lewis Winch can start pulling.

The Lewis Winch is a drum-winch similar to other drum-winches such as the permanently mounted winch you see on the front bumper of most off road atv and 4 wheel drive vehicles. But that is where the similarity ends.

Unlike electric winches, the Lewis Winch is a gas-powered portable winch that is not permanently mounted to anything.

One of the greatest advantages that the Lewis Winch has over permanently-mounted electric winches is that you can pull a vehicle in any direction you want - not just forward, which is usually not the direction you want to go, because chances are that the water or mud that your off road atv is stuck in, probably continues to get deeper.

The second great advantage that the Lewis Winch has over permanently-mounted electric winches is that it won't drain your battery and leave you dead in the water, because it will run forever as long as you have gasoline with you.

The third and maybe most important advantage the Lewis Winch has over permanently-mounted electric winches is that you can use it anywhere and at anytime you need a winch, because it is a portable winch.

Whether you are a hunter, a boater, a logger, a sportsman or own a portable saw mill or an off road atv, we guarantee that you will find a million uses for this clever invention.