warn 2500 wiring on 99 sportsman 500

[livintofish]

Hey guys, thought hopefully someone would know the answer to this hopefully, warn and the polaris dealers haven't had an answer. Got the winch all hooked up, however it doesnt work and I believe the problem is with the red wire off the switch. One dealer I talked to said to locate any keyed wire and splice er in there. So I got the multimeter and found a keyed wire and nothing. I know that there is a specific wire this needs to be spliced to, just can't seem to find anyone who knows which one. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. I just bought the thing and really want to go get it stuck, but need a winch just in case. thanks

[Dave]

Did you forget the small jumper wire on the contactor? Look closely at the wiring diagram. On the contactor, it supplies ground from the negative (black) battery cable to the small black switch wire. It's hard to see in the diagram and I've forgotten that wire before, too.

[livintofish]

hey Dave thanks for the quick response, still not sure I understand. For one thing, I have the new contactor(4 bolt) cause the old (8 bolt) model was recalled. So on the new contactor there are blue/yellow that go to winch, red/ black that go to battery, and there are 2 small inline plugs that go to 2 plugs coming off the rocker switch, the only other wire that is involved that I can see in the diagram is a red wire coming off the rocker switch that is supposed to power the winch by turning on the key, this is the red wire that I believe I spliced into the wrong spot( a red wire coming off the smaller of the 2 spedo harnesses. any additional advice would be appreciated. Hopefully that makes sense, I never saw any additional ground wires off the contactor.

[Dave]

On the terminal that goes to the battery negative (black), is there another wire there? You should have two ring terminals attached to that terminal.

Use this online link, zoom in on Figure 11 and you should be able to see what I'm talking about.

2500 Winch

[livintofish]

Now I'm with you... ok that contactor pictured is the old one that got recalled, my contactor never came with a small jumper wire. So maybe its missing a wire. That goes from the ground/black on the contactor to what I believe is the ground from the winch on the contactor/ yellow, right? so I may be missing that little jumper wire. trying to get an answer from warn....thanks

[Dave]

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ok that contactor pictured is the old one that got recalled, my contactor never came with a small jumper wire.

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So maybe its missing a wire.

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Could be.

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That goes from the ground/black on the contactor to what I believe is the ground from the winch on the contactor/ yellow, right?

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NOPE...leave the wires that come from the winch alone. The contactor switches the voltage on those wires. One direction, the yellow will be postive and blue negative. The other direction, they'll be opposite.

I can't open the pdf from home, something's wrong with my PC but, the small wire on that old 8-bolt contactor supplies the ground to the switch. I think that's where you might be having the problem. It may be best for you to call Warn since I'm not having any luck tonight opening PDF's to take look at the 4-bolt contactor. Sorry.

[livintofish]

Thanks for the suggestions Dave, I finally got around to working on it again. I was thinking the only thing that I was not positive of on the install was the red wire coming off the switch to power the unit sure enough I had it hooked up to a keyed wire with less than 12 volts which is not enough to make the system work, the voltmeter saved me alot of time though. Now to go get it stuck.......

[Dave]

Yup, that'll do it... Ride safe.