Re: (ET) wheel horse c-185 lift using a small wench for mower lift?

[Jeffrey Tickner <jeff tickner gmail com>]

The problem with the winch you point out at harborfreight.com is that it 
has no reverse. 
I assume your talking about:
http://www.harborfreight.com/2000-lb-electric-atvutv-winch-with-automatic-load-holding-brake-68146.html
note the free-spooling feature and automatic load holding brake... I would 
assume that means that you manually release the load and then the cable 
just spools out

If you look at this product (yes I know it's 120V) it calls out the 
reverse feature, just like our equipment lifts
http://www.harborfreight.com/1500-lb-capacity-120-volt-ac-electric-winch-96127.html

I found a 12V winch with reverse on ebay, the switches just reverse 
polarity so it's possible you may be able to do the same thing with the 
harbor freight winch through appropriate wiring and removal of braking 
pawls etc. but you would be better off finding a winch WITH reverse so 
reduce the amount of engineering you would have to do.