I have a brand new Futaba Sail winch 5801 on a Star 45. We set it up correctly and in 5-6mph winds it stopped moving the sails (its never been stressed at all).
When I brought it in it was making a grinding noise and the winch would not move at all no matter what.
The noise would ONLY stop when power was no longer applied.
I opened it up and the gears are all in tact and connected.
Is it toast?
Saildog, in a servo of most any kind there can only be a limited number of failure modes with a noisy output. Gears, you eliminated this. Feedback pot not working, disconnected, or jammed. Bearings, this would be my guess. Bad, incorrect, or not properly installed. This assembly will look ok, but a little looseness may cause noise and lack of movement. I have found all these things in used as well as new servos. Clyde