Never had any problem with mine (not even cable) and has been through 2 winters of snowplowing, god knows how many pulls out of the mud n ooze, many trees pulled out of the woods. Still a kicking.

 

Ok, let’s assume that Warn winches are the worst product made. Why would you purchase a Ramsey 2500 if it is manufactured at the same plant? If they are identical in every way, then they are most likely made at the same plant. Many manufactures share facilities and slap a different sticker on the item. Now you took out a POS used Warn and installed a new POS Ramsey. Makes sense to me.

If you feel that your $99 Ramsey is better than a $300 Warn, great. I am sure you will be happy with it now you have spent at least $400 on winches and more than twice the labor for install.

It may have been a factory defect. If you had purchased it new you could have gotten an exchange. You purchased it used and knew that it had some sort of defect. Maybe your good friend should let you return it and give you your money back.

I too fell that when purchasing a Warn product one is also paying in part for the name. As I said before I purchased a Superwinch 2000 lb for $200. I wasn’t willing to pay more.

 

paragraphs are your friend

 

VAKERO* ok, i see that you are strong minded about my dilema. great, but i havent purchased another winch just yet. i must first pawn the warn off to someone else [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-smile.gif[/img] . then ill make a decision on a new one. and it will not be a warn. im not alone in this topic obviously.

the old good friend believed in warn and i dont hold him accountable in any way, just warn. i am on "the list" with my local dealer, which means i have status there and can get stuff "done" and for inexpensive. when i told them about this fairly new winch and its problems, they informed me of warns policies. their reps do not visit the dealers, and they are impersonable to deal with. keep in mind that this is coming from a very large regional dealer here in atlanta. there was zero way to return or exchange the winch through my dealer. i even tried to get them to warrantie it to a new atv. NO GO.

someone post another promising story about their winch not working. makes me feel better about mine.

 

also wanted to add that the winches in topic are mostly the 2500 lb series spread.

 

I have a Warn/Yamaha 2000. The solenoid went out on it just before Marengo last year.

Me and a bud disconnected it and ran it w/o the solenoid [img]i/expressions/face-icon-small-happy.gif[/img]

A year later, it still works fine

 

The last time I checked there were over 62000 registered ATV Connection online users. If you could ask, every single one of them would tell you of a problem they had with their ATV at one time or another. That doesn’t make what they own a POS; it shows only a problem that can be solved if wanted. Problems can happen to any product at any time. That is the reason manufactures offer warranties.

If the winch was checked for an electrical fault before it was installed the twisted lug may have been found. If the problem was corrected and the winch performance tested before the contactor was installed you may have not had the urge to repair an otherwise seemingly good part there by destroying it.

Although I am sympathetic for the time and money that you have lost it seems to me that the repairs may have only extended to a new drum cable and the time to do the diagnosis, repair and then final performance testing.

Out of curiosity, before installation, did you install the blue and yellow leads on the winch? Did you try to trolley the cable out and then back in by pressing the leads onto a battery cable, then reversing the leads. If told of a possible electrical problem this seems only prudent as a basic go/ no go test. To move onto something more advanced did you use a megger to obtain a megohm reading on the leads and stator/ commutator? If you had the short circuit would have been readily apparent.

 

I bought a Ramsey winch when I purchased my atv. I looked around and found that the Ramsey is cheaper in price than the Warn and the Ramsey has a lifetime warranty verses the one year on the Warn. I probably have used my Ramsey a dozen times, even pulling out a Ranger pick up stuck in a mudhole. It has rescued me several times as well. I have submerged it almost weekly for the past 8 months and no problems. I dont know about Warn because I have never owned one, but I sure can tell you about Ramsey.

 

To be certain, when you buy Warn a chunk of money is paid for the name. That being said, it is a stretch to believe this winch is the worst ever produced of any product line ever made. Seems AutoBeam would just assume everyone boycott Warn because of a faulty winch that he purchased used. He even knew it had an electrical problem. All I am saying here is Auto bears some cope ability on this one, the blame should not be placed on Warn alone.

Also remember that just because a dealer may have done the origional installation it does not mean it was correct.

 

The solenoid definitely sucks. I installed one on my Vinson probably 1 1/2 yrs ago and only used it once to pull a 2wd out. I recently had to pull an atv out and we didn't even try to use my winch. Later on it just slipped my mind that I hadn't used it in a while so I thought I would make sure it worked, well it didn't. I just got done trouble shooting it and found the problem, it's in the solenoid. Being that it was already bad I took it apart and it's apparent that water has gotten in there and coroded over. I think it's pretty pathetic that me being one of the rare people who take care of their atv and keep it out of water as much as possiable to have this problem. It's clearly not made very well as far as keeping water out of it. Now I'm about to have to spend about 100 bucks on a new one and cross my fingers that this doesn't happen again.

This one was mounted on top of my storage box on the rear end, the best place to keep it dry other than inside the box itself which I didn't want to do because I keep a compressor in there. I'll probably leave it mounted in the same spot, but cover it up will silicone. Anyone else have any ideas?