Hello....anybody have this as an issue before...

A buddy and I were burying ourselves in a swamp and the winching out. My freespool wasnt working so I had to use the buttons to get my cable out and then back in. It seemed like after every long winch session the switch would stop working for a while....wouldn't go in or out.

I was was wondering if that is a faulty switch, solenoid or just a side effect of being hot...?


thanks in advance,

tim

 

It is a 2011 polaris sportsman 550 touring with a pure polaris winch

 

Water,mud and electronics don't always go together. Check the connections at the winch,commutator,battery and rocker switch. Plus you can ohm the rocker switch wires and see if it's working ok. If you still have a problem it could be in the winch motor itself.

 

I installed my own winch and secured all connections with boots and filled with dielectric grease. Being buried in a swamp condition probably cuases the winch to get hot and they will (at least mine does) shut down until they cool. As Op suggested do check all connections and the switch but it sounds to me like it is getting hot. My KFI winch has a thermal overload on it so if it gets hot it stops.

 

Key words there were "long winching session". Atv winches are only meant to be used intermittently. After a few minutes of hard pulling, they will overheat. As Kymco 450i said, it probably has some thermal switch that shuts it off to keep from burning up the electric motor for the winch. If its covered in mud and water, it can't get any air and will get hot. If the winch was also installed in 2011 when the quad was new and was used a lot, it may very well be used up.

 

Probably overheated. You need to get your free-spool fixed so you don't have to use the winch motor as much.

 

Thanks for the responses. I cleaned the connections that were rusty and got the freespool to work again.

The winch was new in 2011 and has been used a handful of times. Mostly used to raise and lower a plow.

Hope that works out the issues....Can you have a winch serviced or are they just toss aways and replace?

 

We sent in Warn winches for repair with no problems,but if it's the Chinese one that came out right before I retired,I'm sure someone could repair it if need be,but from what I heard on the forum and guys at the shop their reliability wasn't that great.

 

Don't know who made them for Polaris, but to answer your question of are they rebuildable, yes, my KFI winch has a rebuild kit available and a website for replacement parts. I would clean everything rusted or not then add dielectric grease on all electrical connections. Try not to run winch for more than a couple minutes at a time.

 

Another thing that will help a lot is if you use a ****** block so the winch cable goes out to your anchor point then doubles back to the ATV. This will double your pulling power so a 2,500 pound winch will pull as hard as a 5,000 pound winch with a single line pull. With the double line pull it should take twice as long to winch yourself out but it's not that slow in my experience.