Why Steve's winch BURNED

[Steve R]

Winchman,

No problem...I'd much perfer to be "corrected and know the truth" then to be "mistaken and THINK I know the truth". I welcome your interest and knowledge in this matter!!

I too had the very same thought. The winch motor has to operate in both diretions and thusly must have alternating polarity applied in order to accomplish an IN and OUT operation....a grounded-to-carriage conept seems odd.

So here's the deal: we're both right. I went out and checked....the two wires coming off the winch attach as follows:

One lead goes from the connector straight into the solenoid housing. The other lead goes straight to a terminal just under the winch motor which is labelled "Motor ground".

The terminal marked "motor ground" is in fact grounded to the entire carriage and consequently the ground of the vehicle. This was formerly where the positive power was being directly connected!!!!!! The previous owner had (moronically) run the + coming off the connector straight to the winch motor terminal marked "motor ground". It was a short-circuit for sure, only insulated by the paint of the cariage/recepticle.

I had assumed that the winch came wired by the Warn factory, and figuring that it worked fine for the previous owner...that it was in fine shape. As Gomer Pyle said: surprise, surprise, sur-Fin'prise!!

It absoultely was the case that the paint was the only factor isolating the juice from hitting the ground. Strange...yes, but once the paint wore away and solid contact was made...that's when she started smokin'.

The front bumper is apparently isolated from the ground/frame and there is a wire running from the negative battery terminal going straight down and connecting to the front bumper itself. This wire, probably about #10 in size, got so hot that it glowed red and before breaking lit the insulation on fire!

Now...here's what I also noticed. There are 2 wires (besides the motor ground) going into the winch motor housing. One is marked F2 and the other marked A. I suspect it's much like the wiring of a PIAA lamp where there is a low-beam and a high-beam: One negative and two inputs for positive. Maybe you can shed some light on this. To aid...here are some pics. I suspect the previous owner, who has still yet to contact me....completely screwed up the wiring and got it drastically wrong.

The flash of the camera alomst has the label un-readable, but the terminal is the winch motor ground and this is where one of the wires feeds in.