Grill guard is done.
The next project was to wire the winch in preparation for a snow run next weekend. After looking over my bumper/grill guard setup, I decided the ideal setup would be mount the solenoid pack in the engine bay.
I started doing some research on how others have done this and came across people replacing their solenoid packs with contactors, specifically units made by Albright and Superwinch. I found some debate about whether those 2 are both made by the same people, but it sounds like Superwinch has them made to their specs.
Simply put, the Superwinch contactor I used replaces this:
With this:
2 together in the same picture.
As you can tell, the wiring for the contactor is much simpler. That original solenoid pack is confusing jumble of wires and somehow the motor turns in 2 different directions even though it looks like they are all wired together through those bus bars.
I'm the type of person when I look into doing something new, I like to read everything I can find. I pieced together a lot of information from various places to come up with my final wiring schematic and solenoid/contactor choice. Maybe this will help someone else in the future. The wiring diagram is for a Tabor 10K winch wired to a Superwinch 90-32459. This winch uses the 5-pin controller.
It took me a little thinking to figure out how the 5-pin controller works with 2 different ground circuits. Basically you have a "main" ground that grounds out with the winch motor ground and then you have a "switch" ground. When you move the switch on the controller you're closing 2 circuits, both the ground circuit and the power circuit. From what I understand this is a safety/reliability thing.
As I mentioned, the contactor I used is a Superwinch 90-32459. The more popular swap is to use Superwinch 90-14452. You will find a lot of forum threads about swapping the 14452 in on Warn 8274 and other 8000# winches. Here's a picture of the 14452:
I think part of the reason this one is popular is because it has the spade terminals for the controller connections. That solenoid/contractor is for their 9000# winch. It's very hard to find specs for the contactors, but the key spec for the 14452 is that it will handle about 420A for 80sec. The problem is my Tabor can pull over 500A. So I looked through Superwinch's different winch specs for a winch that used the contactor style solenoid and can draw over 500A. The 90-32459 is the contactor they use on their Talon 9.5 & 12.5 winches.
Both contactors are available from SummitRacing along with other places. I thought based on the product images the mounting holes would have the vibration isolators but it didn't. So I pulled out my HF grommet assortment and found 3 that worked good for that purpose.
The new contactor is mounted on the "leg" of the passenger side battery tray.
Most everything is wired using 2/0 welding cable. Even with flexible welding cable it is a pain to get everything wired up.
I used a junction block to wire the winch controls. I did this because I felt it's a easier way to combine the dissimilar products (Superwinch contactor with 3-wire to Tabor 5-wire winch controller) plus adding an in-cab controller down the road.
In that picture I don't have the plug for the controller wired in yet. I feel like I would like to find a junction block with a cover of some sort to swap in down the road. This one works for now and it was only $3 or $4 at Home Depot. I put plenty of dielectric grease on the connections since they are open.
I made a bracket to mount the plug for the controller in one of the grill openings.
Even with my careful research I still had the winch directions switched. In on the controller fed line out and vice versa. Luckily with that terminal block wiring all I had to do was swap 2 wires and it worked as intended. The wiring diagram at the top does reflected the corrected wiring.
***UPDATE: 2yrs & 8mon and the contactor is still working great. I've done a lot of hard winching, enough to break a winch line.***
In one of the pictures above you can see the battery selector switch. I run 2 batteries wired in parallel through the switch. The switch will allow me to run either or both batteries. I always run with both batteries. The charging lead from the alternator comes in to the bottom of the switch so the selected battery(s) are getting charged.
The second battery is mounted using a factory driver side battery tray I mounted back on post
573.
Another issue I dealt with is the radiator overflow located on the passenger side inner fender. I don't like the way it looks and it's in the way of my battery switch and future wiring plans. I picked up a factory overflow for a 6.2L diesel equipped K5 also from Summit was just $12. Fit perfectly on the diver side of the radiator like it would be in the K5, although not in exactly the same place.
Down the road I'll add in my CUCV bus bars for positive and negative feeds. That way I won't have to have all the cable ends piled up under the negative battery terminal and output of the battery selector switch.
I have long thought that the stock TBI ran to lean myself.
