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

I am blown away that everyone assumes the solenoid is faulty. Solenoids are always normally open. It needed to be actuated somehow at least once to fail.

My gut in this is it was wired incorrectly.

Immediately upon making contact with the battery it was under load. This was evidenced by the motor running and the sparking “so hard” it melted the battery terminals. My initial guess is the control wiring is closed causing the solenoid to immediately close and run the winch motor. The other guess is the load wiring is closed bypassing the solenoid completely. Now the ground wire that smoked is confusing. Why is there a sub 10ga wire grounding the motor to the solenoid? Is it a ground or a bond wire?

I have seen solenoids weld themselves closed. But they were well abused and were actuated and then stayed closed. They didn’t close all by themselves.

 

Solenoids fail, but not like this.

This setup is incorrectly wired. I'm thinking that two of the four cables that connect to the solenoid are swapped. The two center ones to the solenoid are the ones that are swapped. This would put the power from the + battery post to the solenoid terminal that should be connected to terminal B.

 

Hard to trouble shoot from far away we will just have to watch how things play out

 

I'm thinking the same thing. And maybe some of the connectors on the small gauge wires are not factory at the solenoid which suggests that the OP had everything disconnected.

 

Thanks, this is what I was looking for when I started this thread.

I had the #3 & #4 cables backwards, as well as the red & white leads. At first I only noticed the cables. I switched them & it still sparked & started spooling. Then I noticed the wires were also mixed.

However, now that everything is correct wired there is nothing. I plugged in the wired remote & got nothing. Ran the power/out leads directly to the battery & it immediately blew the fuse 3A in the solenoid.

 

Do you have a multimeter?

I think there are some basic mistakes you are making. This really isn’t that complicated. One solenoid controls one direction and the other one the other direction. Your comments about the 3a fuse are confusing. It indicates you still have a wiring issue. There are two basic circuits here. Control and load. That 3a fuse should be on the control wiring.

I would suggest finding someone local to work with you. Your description is confusing which means it is almost impossible to troubleshoot across the internet. A few minutes with a multimeter I am sure we could sort your wiring. It may be a solenoid issue now after the previous wiring issues. Without a multimeter you don’t know if you are chasing the same issues or new ones. I personally would be verifying the solenoid operation using control logic only and verifying with a continuity test across the load contacts.

 

Yes, the 3a fuse on the controller wiring. It popped as soon as I connected battery power & moved the controller.

I have a multimeter but my electrical knowledge is limited to car audio. I turn wrenches for a living, wires confuse me.

 

Everybody keeps calling it a "solenoid". My money is on its a solid state relay. Logically the same as a solenoid, however the failure mode is dependent on the properties of the solid state device (e.g., is it a MOSFET, SCR etc).

So the fail open or fail closed scenario is hard to know unless you know the behavior of the particular device.

 

We are talking about a "solenoid" that controls a winch

 

An SSR seems possible, although the prices for solid state relay that handle this kind of current are pretty high, so I would expect a mechanical solenoid.


That said, it might have some diodes or other safety stuff that might be toast.


If it were me I'd disconnect each wire one at a time and ring them out with a meter, then check them off on the drawing once I was also certain they were connected correctly.

Edit:. Id also consider bench testing the solenoid box so I knew what it was supposed to do, and that it was actually doing it.

 

OP is now viral
https://www.instagram.com/p/BxQm79chIzF/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=1ui551bmew6oc