Forum Friends,
Please take a minute to read this as it may save you from very costly damage or worse.

As some of you know, few weeks ago we ran Fordyce Trail in the Lake Tahoe area. Our good friend HONEY BADGER suffered a vehicle fire due to his winch power cables being pinched and overheated softening the insulation. At the pinch the insulation wore through and arced and caught fire.

Today I was tinkering with our Jeep and decided to make sure our winch power cables were free from restriction. When I started wiggling them I found the hot wire pinched and while I was wiggling it acred and smoked!!! Obviously I couldn't get it unhooked from the battery fast enough! We were WAY too close to suffering this same fate.

PLEASE take a few minutes to check your cables to make sure you do not have this problem. I will be getting new cables along with extra heavy duty insulation.

Rather be safe than sorry.

 

Yikes!
I will be doing this tomorrow! Thanks for the heads up

 

I have a battery disconnect switch on the negative post. I use it for towing but, it could be handy if this situation ever happens.

 

Thanks for the heads up and thank goodness you didn't suffer a similar fate as Badger. I'm going to check my cables tomorrow. Just out of curiosity, what was it that pinched your cable? Do you have any pics? The cables to my warn are really stout. I imagine it would take something pretty hard to pinch them

 

I will be inspecting mine tomorrow. Thanks for bringing this to our attention.

 

the cables were pinched where they were wrapped next to the fuse box.

 

DAMN IT..... GLAD TO HEAR YOUR JEEP OK SEE U NEXT TIME B-SAFE MR DON

 

Holy cow damn goodcall...thanks for the heads up

 

Going to put it on my check list THANKS

 

Same thing happend to me last year. I had my solenoid box mounted above over the middle of the spool and the winch cable rubbed against the positive lead and caused a fire. The wires got so hot that it melted my battery terminals to the ground and everything in its path. I was lucky I noticed it and cut the super hot lead with my knife and grabed a fire extinguisher from a friend to take care of the fire. If you mount the solenoid box over the middle make sure your cables have plenty of room between the winch spool and grill and always carry a fire extinguisher.