HELP¡!¡! Installed winch, nearly burned my truck to the ground

The bungle of small wires on the solenoid are all the way it came. I simply added 3 leads to the remote power & in/out grounds to run an in cab switch. I understand it looks like a rats nest but it's really not.

I just rechecked all the wiring & everything is correct & there's no contact anywhere or anything of that nature. It has to be a bad solenoid. It was either faulty or maybe was dropped & damaged at some point during my recent move.

Either way, I'm gonna just swap it out with a new solenoid.

 

I referenced it with a diagram, everything is wired correctly.

 

Are you missing a ground wire from your solenoid to your winch?

I have the Smittybilt XO winch and it’s looks very similar.

Also the POSITIVE and NEGATIVE wires that go to the battery should be coming from your solenoid, not from the winch.

 

No, that's not how it's wired.

There are 4 cables coming off the solenoid, 3 go to the winch & 1 goes to battery positive. A separate cable goes from battery negative to the winch.

There's also a small lead wire grounded to the solenoid body that goes to the same ground post on the winch as the negative battery cable.

That's how the manual says to wire it up.

 

That is the same as my Warn.

Let us know if/when the solenoid fixes it. Not really sure what else it could be, the wiring is pretty simple.

 

Sounds like you got it under control with the new solenoid coming.

 

Bad solenoids happen more often than your think. If it happens again with a new solenoid, truly try another. You might have to go through 2‐3 new solenoids before things operate correctly.

Source: I have 3 engineering degrees.

 

I've run into this a few times. Not specifically with winch solenoids but with new in box parts being bad straight out of the box. Happens.

 

Ok I looked at my diagram again. On mine there’s 4 wires to the winch, one being ground wire. The negative battery wire also connects to the ground wire port on the winch.

 

Is Page 5 of the instruction manual available?


mini-rant. I hate throwing parts at problems without diagnosing them. /mini-rant

 

It would be easy to put the meter on the two hot terminals of the solenoid to see if they show continuity without being powered with the 12VDC. If meter doesn't show OL(open line) or similar then solenoid is stuck closed, broken closed, whatever you wanna call it. It has to stay open until 12VDC are applied

 

This is for the XO model but I’m sure it’s the same since that’s not how the XO model looks like.

http://www.smittybiltdepot.com/aux_incl/pdf.ashx?pdf=X20 WINCH 8-15.pdf&line=S/B

 

Huh. I went and found the manual too, its equally unhelpful. Its all "connect A to B," but nothing about what the function of different things are. Laame.

 

Yeah all we need is a simple schematic, there are only a handful of circuits and components. Would be pretty easy to without the schematic as well due to simplicity. But it's up to OP if he wants to

 

As in bad out of the box or randomly going bad? Because I planned to just run a 500a battery isolator on they battery positive lead to control power via an in cab rocker switch. But now I'm wondering if I should also add an inline fuse or circuit breaker.

 

I haven't been able to find any actual schematics other than basic connect A to B type stuff.

 

This is why I like to test new things to ensure they work properly before I start modifying them. It's just too much of a coincidence that the only time I hear something like this happening, OP has modified his wiring. Of course that may not be the issue, but it seems like it.

Good luck with your resolution OP.

 

I'm hedging bets on that solenoid being faulty.

 

Return it to factory configuration and test it.

If all else fails you can contact smitty and maybe they can send you a replacement solenoid.

 

Nevermind