I own a 2007 Sportsman 500 HO DlX. 14 months and 30 hours....needless to say it appears the contactor for the Polaris Winch has gone bad...Cable goes out...but will not retreive. I have purchased a new $100 contactor and would like to ask about how difficult replacing the contactor will be. Is this something most mechanilcally inclined folks can do?

Has anyone else had difficulties with these Polaris winches?

Thanks in advance.

 

Difficulties with a Polaris winch:

I had a Polaris 2500 winch (which I later found-out was not made by Warn but cheap Chinese JUNK)

The way you can tell if it's WARN is if the pull teather is RED and reads "Warn".

If your pull teather is ORANGE and reads "Polaris", you own a pure junk winch! Go to Warn.com and Replace it with something of value.

Last Winter I went through TWO Polaris-chinese junk winches. First one would drop the plow like a hot potato and sometimes not go up. The second one lifted it just fine but would jam and not go down!

Polaris was not pleasant about warranting them. My dealer really went to bat for me for the warranty work.

I have since changed it for the high quality one that currently hangs off the front....a WARN.

Don't fix it, replace it.

 

in the group of guys i ride with, we have replaced the contacors 5 times on 3 different machines. same problem as you have. it's very easy to replace. couple u bolts to take off of the machine(depending on where its mounted). mine is under the seat. and then 4 wires which are clearly color coordinated...............if it is a warn winch, call them and complain. ask for a new contactor. we got 5 new ones so far. thanks to forums like this ,they have no choice . can't have bad publicity

 

I agree that warn should replace them at no cost to you. It's too bad you already bought some. Maybe they'll do something for you. I have read many posts where people have had problems with the contactors and warn sent them new ones for free. Fortunately, I have had no problems with mine. Maybe, just maybe, for once in my life I didn't get the bad one! LOL! Now that I've said it it will crap out on me this weekend! LMAO!

 

Actually the winch is not a Warn...it is one of those dreaded Polaris types.. I contacted the dealer that sold me the vehicle and they are not willing to offer me any support with Polaris......it must be the American way!!

 

theres several on ebay, it wouldn't have to be a polaris one, just have to same number of posts

 

<div class="FTQUOTE"><begin quote>Originally posted by: yaterman

Actually the winch is not a Warn...it is one of those dreaded Polaris types.. I contacted the dealer that sold me the vehicle and they are not willing to offer me any support with Polaris......it must be the American way!!</end quote></div>

It is made by warn for polaris.

 

http://www.warn.com/atv/recall_notice.shtml

 

yea the dealer told me about the recall on the 8 pin contactor. as usual our 5 that went bad were the 4 pin ones that replaced the 8 pin ones.

 

STOP!!!!! Tell your Polaris dealer that it is TOTAL BS that they can not get you a contactor.

I work at a Polaris dealers in parts and sales. We have replace about 6 contactors from the polaris winches. Polaris knows that there is a problem with these, your dealer just needs to do a parts warranty and will have NO problem getting a new free one from Polaris. When a customer comes into our dealership with a bad contactor, we give them a contactor out of a new polaris winch kit, and then do a warranty and replace it when we get it a little later.

as far as replacing them, i have personally installed many winches on the sportsmans and replacing the contactor is about a 15-20 min job your first time around.