winch issue, wth..solenoid? or toasted internally

marty79

marty79

the LS Swap Guy
Joined
Nov 24, 2013
Location
Conover, NC
so thursday show up at Gulches ride around a few hours just checking the place out, no issues everything working great.
Friday morning wake up, start the jeep ran 30sec or so, died...lost all power, dead dead!!
open hood, start checking cables and hot wire to winch was HOT AS HELL...like daiuum.
Unplugged the winch, fired right up and everything was good the rest of the trip on that aspect.

Any ideas, solenoid is new, only used maybe twice since new and it's been covered ever since new.
The winch itself is like 4-5ish years old...been transferred from rig to rig lol.
Is there anything worth "taking apart to try and fix" or toss it and get a new one, it's fried??? thanks yall
 
What brand and model winch.
Any chance you’ve got a fuse on that hot side wire?

there’s a short somewhere allowing current to flow. Either there’s a lot of water in that solenoid or it’s in stuck closed circuit.
Give it a tap with a hammer see if it breaks free. Is so, unplug the winch and replace solenoid when you get home.

wiyhout the solenoid circuit being closed power isn’t moving any further into the winch so that’s where I’d start looking.
 
i guess I'll start with solenoid first and go from there. Its a Havoc Off Road Winch I bought about 5yrs ago, been a great winch, never let me down, 10000lb
 
Have you checked the solenoid to see of it's open or closed?
 
BigClay said:
Did you wire up that second battery?
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lol no. I did add 2 40A relays, one to each fan and that made a huge difference in power output to the fans for the whole weekend.
As for the winch, little backstory...2 weeks ago the hotwire of the winch got pinched and fried my battery, my alternator and what I thought the winch too. Brought it home, changed battery, changed alternator, and fixed the wire to the winch plugged it back in and worked fine all week putting it around the yard before the trip. Thursday night all was well riding around for hours, then the switch accidentally engaged the winch in so it pretty much destroyed the fairlead and bend the hell out of the bumper front before I could kill the switch,..yeah I know big oops. So I thought it was still ok, cause we rode around Thursday night for hours and did fine. Friday morning crank up, 30sec later boom, everything died...unplug winch all was good rest of the trip as far as electricals went..actually my electricals were better than ever the whole trip.
Probably should've said all this before lol, sorry
 
Jeff B said:
Have you checked the solenoid to see of it's open or closed?
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not yet, got work to do on other stuff before I fix the "stuff I broke" LOL
 
shawn said:
Make sure you carry spares.
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Pretty sure that's the brand new one I bought several months ago it's only been used twice lol
 
McCracken said:
I wouldn't run one but I figured with his budget maybe that's the options he's looking for.
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At retail, the contactors are $100-200ish. They're not really any more reliable than solenoids, though.
 
Jeff B said:
Have you checked the solenoid to see of it's open or closed?
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So I plugged winch in, rolled out my cable to thread it back in tight all worked fine for about 20min..I haven't done anything to it. Pulled cover off, solenoid has some mud on the outside but no corrosion.
So now what? Lol, take solenoid apart and look at contacts still? Thanks dude
 
Only thing I found is all 4 terminals on the solenoid were lightly loose, that's it. Inside solenoid still looks brand new! I'm thinking it was in winch remote? Switch has been funny past couple months..idk but it works, I'm leaving it unplugged though and will put one of those battery switches on it I guess so it dont kill the jeep while in middle of something
 
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