Why Steve's winch BURNED

[Steve R]

Ya gotta love this forum.....

I truly believe the individual who goes by the name "Hummer Man" was whole-heartedly just trying to convey some mindful information. He's right....tweak the rig and go to jail. It's not fair to expect the insurance to pay for the incompetance of someone's custom work should it go wrong. I don't feel he was chastizing me or finding fault.

But dude....at least 3 women can attest to your being all man???? Now that pretty much sunk what little credibility you may have had. We don't even have 3 women on this forum to start with. I can't believe DRTYFN didn't torch you to cinders!

Allow me to cast some illumination on the winch subject. Yes...I did purchase it used. I was under the impression that the winch came complete and was an item purchased from a shop.

The reality of the situation is that the winch motor and solenoid controller were bought from Warn, a company made a carriage to hold the winch...and the owner himself apparently wired the thing up.

I never suspected the former owner wired it himself.....it looked as though it came out of a large crate and came wired from the Warn factory. It seemed stock and OEM.

Ironically he kept the winch strapped in his truck and only used it occassionally. During his occassional use he never rubbed enough paint off the carriage or H2's receptical to conduct the short-circuit.

Even though the polarity was switched, he apparently never noticed that the direction of pull/let-out was reversed on the hand-remote. So it worked for him and he expressed that it worked fine.

So there ya go, being that it worked fine for him AND that it looked completely Warn-factory original wiring....it 'ELUDED' me.

Now here's the dumb part. Being that I had no idea that the former owner wired the thing...I called him and left a messgae telling him about how I need to go after the dumbF**k who wired it wrong. He was less then amused by the profantic reference and just denied that it could be that case.

I explained that I wired my entire house, every outlet, switch, recessed light, alarm system, etc, etc and that I've designed electrical circuits. So he replies: "that's A/C current....D/C is different. Okay

I told him I had pics that show that he wired the + wire directly to the winches motor. He challenged me to send him the pics. No apologies, no regret, no regard for nearly torching my H2 to the ground. That's just him. He's still a good guy.

In the end, I cut-back the molten part and the connector wires fit easier now. The one wire the melted & burned did little damage because we hit it with an extinguisher real quick. I've replaced that wire and everything is basically fine.

Bottom line: I got off way lucky. Electrical fires are usually devastating!

Lesson learned: always have a fire extinguisher on hand, if not for you, then the other guy!

Oh yeah...and always second-guess anything you buy used...even if it seeems new out of the box....you just may get burned