Can't get the winch to work. The toggle switch is good, Also checked the switch to feed or rewind the cable, connections look good and clean. When I turn on the switch it makes that normal click sound but can't can the winch to work. Any ideas what I can look for a test with a ohm's meter.

 

The first thing I would check is to see that I was getting voltage to the winch motor when the toggle is activated. The winch motor has 2 leads - positive and negative (the toggle swaps polarity to reverse the motor). Put your multimeter leads on the motor leads and read voltage as you opperate the toggle switch, if you get voltage at the motor and it doesn't turn the motor, you've probably got bad brushes (most common, but could also be a broken winding on the armature) - if you don't have voltage to the motor, the problem is somewhere in the power curcuit.
You can also test the winch motor with a battery and jumper cables by connecting the jumper cables directly to the winch motor leads.

 

On the the winch there is a 1 post and 2 post. Which one is negitive and positive. Both wires are black and it really hard to trace the wires back from the battery.

 

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On a DC motor, you can change direction of rotation by which lead is positive and which is negative (ie - positive on post 1 negative on post 2 may be clockwise rotation ... flip it around to positive on post 2 and negative on post 1 may be counter clockwise rotation). This is how you get the line to power in and power out. To test your winch motor with a set of jumper cables, all you need to do is hook the cables up to either of the posts - if the winch motor opperates, quickly remove the jumper cables.

Hope this helps

 

I had the same thing on my winch it didnt do it all the time. Just when I didnt use it for a long time. All I have to do is release the spool and pull it out a few inches, then reingage the spool and it would usually take care of it. Sometimes a little rap on the motor with a screwdriver or rubber mallet fixed it also.

 

I hook up a battery to the winch with jumper cables. The winch made a noise and the twist swich started to smoke so I quickly unpluged the jumpers. Maybe bad twist switch. Can I test the solenoid?

 

The twist switch shouldn't smoke, unless there is a short somewhere in it (maybe even a stuck contact). I've had to replace several of the twist switches, and have always used the jumper cable method to find that it was the switch problem instead of the winch motor. You also need to make sure you have a good, clean ground connection.
The solenoid is easy to test - with the toggle on (you should hear the solenoid click), you should have 12 volts DC on both of the big wires - if you only have 12VDC on one cable, the contacts are burned in the solenoid.

 

[img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img] My Warn 2000 had stopped working also and it turned out to be one of the defective solinoids that was under recall. I would check with Warn to see if thats the problem as they will pay to have it replaced.

 

I belive the recall solinoids were white rogers which mine isn't that brand. I can hear a click sound from the solinoid but have tested it yet. I wonder what else it could be?