Continued from above….
So first off remove your front grille and or bumper so you can have free and clear access to the front frame area. This will allow you to work with plenty of room, fish wires and cable tie properly. Below you will see the mount already installed and the grill set aside on top.
After the mount is in bolt your winch to the mount bracket.
The easy part is now complete! Now it’s time to get down to business. Look around underneath and see if you find an empty wire loom, if you do find out where it goes to, probably underneath your seat near the electrical, next to your fuel tank or air box but somewhere close so you can run wires from the front to your battery and fuse box. If you do not have loom and want some you will probably need to remove some body panels and work it in there, make sure you secure every 8 or so inches to NON MOVING PARTS with black cable ties. Try to keep it away from anything that get’s hot and try to keep it high and dry away from anything it can snag on the road. Use an electrical fish or a coat hangar with electrical tape to push or pull the wires through easily.
The wires you will need to run are one black and one red heavy duty wire that feeds the main HIGH current. These are the long wires, the short wires (same colors) are for use from the contactor to the battery. Note on the Venom you have 2 sizes of crimp lugs, make sure you use the larger one on the winch side. The small ones are needed at the contactor so that you have room and do not short them out on the studs. Leave a service loop, this loop will not only allow you to make repairs to your wires in case one breaks without having to pull a new one but it will also provide a place water can drip off instead of following the cable up the loom or towards the lugs on the winch body.
On this photo you will see something missing Venom provides you with black rubber boots for all high current attachment points. I left them out for the photo but USE THEM! Use a good electrical dielectric grease on all studs and lugs prior to slipping the boots over the studs. These boots provide you from water/mud/electrical short protection and the grease will protect the studs/lugs from corrosion and rusting when the boots fill up with water. Make sure you slide them off after a good mud bog or pressure washing and get all the water out!
Now that your LOAD wires are attached and routed to your electrical area the thinking part starts. You will either need to find a place to stash the extra wire securely, extend the wire (doubtful) or if your are good with electronics cut to length, re-crimp a lug and solder it for security and corrosion resistance. Remember corrosion will rob your wiring of it’s current ability. The less current at the winch the less it can work, just like those dirty battery clamps on your truck you only clean when you cant’ start your car or truck! You NEED every single amp you can get out of your battery at the winch motor so that it can get you pulled out of that F%$&*N@ hole!
Sorry about the blurry shot it was getting dark!
Note the wire coming out of the loom next to the air box, along the frame and then along the battery under the seat.
OK for this part you will need a volt meter or at the very least a old fashioned test light. Poke around in the fuse block and find a fuse that has NO power, the tops of most fuses will have a LITTLE bit of metal exposed and you can touch your testers red lead or pin to that and your testers black lead or alligator clip to your battery’s negative post. When you find one that has no power turn the ignition key on and check for power again. If you see 12-13v or the light becomes BRIGHT (not dim) you have found your ignition sense lead, make a note of which fuse. Then remove the fuse and with power on to the ATV check each side of the fuse SOCKET and see which one is SOURCE and which one is LOAD. Your source will show voltage with the fuse out and your load will not since the circuit is broken by the missing fuse. You want to tap off of the SOURCE side of the fuse holder. If you tap off of the load side you will add current draw to the original fuse once it is back there in ADDITION to what that fuse is supplying. You could blow the fuse due to too high of a current draw on the fuse. NO making the fuse bigger is NOT the way to fix it!
Once you find the tap point connect your red wire from the control switch harness to the fuse. This will vary from ATV to ATV on how you can do it. In this case I chose to use a brass MINI-ATC fuse tap with a quick disconnect crimp. Between the harness and the fuse tap I installed the NOT SUPPLIED in line fuse holder with a 5 amp ATC fuse. Do not exceed 5 amps but use whatever you want either ATC or Min-ATC, I do not suggest going below 2 amps since the control voltage may blow it. I have not measured what it actually is, 5 amps is plenty of protection 2 amps should be good, but may be a bit low. Some people may not want to use fuse taps, they are kind of a pain to fit under the cover and are tough to find sometimes. If you find a wire in a stock harness that is hot on ignition purchase a Scotch Lock “T Tap” with a ¼ male spade crimp.
Wrap the tap around the hot lead and squeeze till’ it locks with a pair or pliers. I like them but be careful as to what you tap into and make sure you use the right gauge tap so you don’t cut your lead in half. I like them since I have used them for years but they can lead to problems if you don’t know what you tapped into or if it’s LOAD or SOURCE. Another spot to look for ignition voltage is near the handlebars, quite often the manufacturer will have provided a connector there for the “from factory” off road lights or winch control switch. This will require extending the control wire back to the bars since the control harness needs to be run and connected to the contactor.
ALSO NOTE: If you have the need to run the winch for any reason with the ignition off you can wire directly to the battery. I do not suggest it but I am sure there are some good reasons for that. I don’t like the idea that any yahoo can come by and push the IN side of the switch while your hook is already right up to the rollers and smoke the motor. Not only that a winch draws a LOT of juice! If you are doing any heavy pulling you really need to have that charging system working as much as it can.
A contactor is a heavy duty relay which isolates the battery from the winch unless you send a control voltage from your bar mounted switch to the contactor. The contactor will switch the polarity of the leads so your motor can go either clockwise or counter clockwise. BE VERY CAUTIOUS WHERE AND HOW YOU MOUNT YOUR CONTACTOR. The contactor has all the high current and low current leads going to it and is usually mounted right under the seat where it is high and dry. Use some blue locktite on it, and make sure the rubber boots are mounted over each stud properly and FULLY. It is here and at the winch studs where a short can cause a fire to start VERY RAPIDLY, at the very least a hot ass! Use good hardware practices also, flat washers and lock washers both on the studs and mounting the contactor body to something secure. Be careful if you are a Venom owner the stud points are very close to each other and leave little to NO ROOM for the boots. MAKE IT WORK DO NOT SKIP THE BOOTS!! Also double check that the lugs you have on the studs are the smaller ones, like I had warned at the start the small lugs are needed for the contactor since there is very little room between them.
Mount your control switch bracket to your bars, use a piece of rubber or some layers of tape under the bracket so it does not rotate on you or scratch up your paint.
The Venom series also includes a remote wired controller so you can winch while off the quad. I like this idea but did not like it enough to fight skeeters and do drilling to my body panels while holding a mini-mag light between my teeth. The controller comes with a plug that mounts to body of the ATV and will require a main hole to be drilled along with 2 smaller ones for the bolts to hold the assembly. Those drawings on the Venom manual are good so just follow them. This harness will also require connection of a red lead to voltage while the ignition is on, and connections back to the contactor. I’ll do it one of these days when I have my ATV back at home and have some time. Please note like the previous ignition lead for the handlebar controller this lead ALSO needs to have a 2-5 amp fuse installed in series with the power for safety and the protection of your ATV’s electrical system and the winch system.
Next connect the short red and black leads from the contactor to the battery. I usually connect my positive lead first then my negative lead. Remember again use the smaller lugs on the contactor and the larger ones on the battery. One tough time I had was the addition of a lug underneath the battery bolt. The bolt was shorter due to that and the nut sitting inside of the battery post was a bit lower than needed to start the threads. I took a spare cable tie and stuck it in the side of the post underneath the nut and it pushed it high enough where the bolt started in the threads. Another option is finding a bolt long enough to tighten enough but yet not bottom out on the battery body. I also use dielectric grease on my battery connections, cover your lug in it and also add a dab to the bolt threads and head.
The last thing to do is find something to do with all the extra slack. On my King Quad I decided to remove the under seat “el cheapo” tool kit and put it somewhere else, the trash was one of my options. I wrapped all the extra wire as best as I could and then cable tied it. There was JUST ENOUGH room to stash all the extra wires and still get the seat closed. You are now done with the hardest part of the install.
Your final step in this install is to attach the roller fairlead to the winch mounting bracket and your hook. The cable loop and crimp WILL NOT fit through the roller assembly so using a wrench and socket take the top or lower roller bolt out and remove the roller. Be careful as there is usually a rubber gasket/washer between the roller and the bracket which you can lose. Pass the crimp through, re-attach the roller and bolt the roller bracket to the winch bracket.
Re-Attach your front bumper and or grille assembly and your installation is complete! You did put all those stupid worthless plastic push pins in a zip lock bag didn’t you ?
Yanks Rhino
