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Vaseline, aka white petroleum jelly, IS a conductor. A poor one, but enough to create leakage current at battery terminals.
If I was going to potch around with Vaseline and zinc dust (and fine dust isn't cheap) I'd use antiseize instead. That's petroleum based oil loaded with copper, nickel, and other metal dust and it is effectively a decent conductor. It might protect the two metals as a sacrificial compound.
Putting aluminum and steel together that way in a marine part is simply defective engineering. If that is all one cylinder with just the machining we see at the bottom end...I'd try to shop around for a less expensive machine shop, and have a new part made up all from one metal--compatible with whatever the rest of the winch body is. I wonder if they could fab it from bronze instead of stainless, and still get sufficient strength and save something at the same time?
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