Woke up in the middle of the night a couple nights ago to a weird screetchy, grinding sound outside… Ran out in the pouring rain to find my new atv winch running! The switch was in the off position (it’s spring loaded/momentary) too.
I tapped the button, and it stopped.
Disconnected the battery, and pushed it into the shop.
Long story short, what I’m pretty sure happened, was that the switch on this one Isn’t rubber booted, nor apparently waterproof…(how did I not notice that before??)
It got soaked in the rain, leaked, and shorted out.
And the winch just kept running even while binding up and jamming the heck out out of the cable because I had it direct wired to the battery. Hadn’t gotten around to putting in the circuit breaker I got for it (didn’t come with one!).
I’m pretty sure that that kind of drag and heavy load on it, heavy amperage draw would have tripped a breaker and stopped it. Oops.
Was a real pain to sort that cable out!
Had to take the hook off, and feed it back and forth through and around the drum, working the loops and switchbacks out of it by hand.. all 40′ of it! Ugh.
I thank God it did it when it did though… I was home, and I had the bedroom windows open. With the windows closed I doubt it would have woke me. Or if I’d been gone, either way it could have ate the winch motor, or at least ran the battery dead… Wouldn’t have been good!
New waterproof switch is on its way now.
Alaskan, Adventurer, Engineer. 