Polaris ATV Forum banner

Sportsman 500 2012 winch nightmare

6K views 3 replies 4 participants last post by  jcam 
#1 · (Edited)
Bought a Viper Max 3500. I got winch hooked up finally but it was a total and absolute nightmare. Took me almost and hour of adjusting "their" mounting brackets on the mount they sent and putting in and out the atv to notice that "polaris" had the winch mount holes drilled 1/4 closer together on one side of the frame than the other so had to oval out the hole on one side...

THE ONLY place to mount the contactor/solenoid is up front under the hood/plastics. Even there, they have soooo many wires and hoses allready it's a tight fit.

So for mounting the contactor/solenoid I ended up taking 1/8 inch steel plate cutting and bending it and making a custom bracket/elbow mount. On the left hand side polaris has a bracket "tab" that is identical to the one on the right side holding the radiator cap assembly so I used the left tab and my mount and now my viper contactor is sitting on top the rear end of my fuse box and the rest sits behind it tucked away and it can't move left/right or up down happily I got it placed in a good spot WITHOUT drilling any holes in my plastics.. "The reason I wanted it to partially rest on the fuse box is because the bracket I made is long so it needed something to rest on to hold some of the weight of the contactor"

The wiring took allllll night. Polaris has a pre-wired setup up front "pos/neg cables that run to a solenoid under seat then to battery" for supposedly making it easier to hook up a winch. Notttt it took me hours of checking connections, re-wiring back and forth and wondering what was wrong that I finally borrowed a friends winch and found that those pre-wires will power a 0.9hp warn winch but don't have enough juice coming out of them to power the 1.5hp winch when using on the 1.5 winch the Viper contactor would just click hard and/or barely turn the winches motor.... In hind sight if I'd have just ran the damn cables directly from battery to winch to see if it powered it I'd of saved ALOT of time but after fighting with the mounts all day and making brackets I was beat :deadhorse:

The way the sportsman is setup "not much room anywhere under the plastics" running wires alllll the way to the rear end battery was a pain but it was do-able. I ended up using the blue and yellow wires from the kit as my pos and neg cables for battery because they are alot longer. After that everything worked fine "damn it"


All in all the winch works perfect even halfway hung my 720lb atv from a tree "back wheels still on ground", polaris on the other hand I now hate. now all I gotta do it go mudding and give the thing a real test yanking out a razr or whatnot. Happy with the winch, fit and finish good, stainless bolts, everything really heavy duty such as the 3/8" thick mount brackets. as for the wiring "they give almost no instructions" but it's as simple as it gets. when they tell you to attach the small red wire from the switches to a key controlled wire use one of those 2 orange and white "accessory" wires polaris has dangling there for you. Customer service is great, shipping was fast and it pulls hard so I'm happy got a lot of winch for the $212 shipped


would I recommend Viper? Yes, is it easy to install on a polaris no.... Why I say this is because I don't know if any other brand with a motor bigger than .9hp would be just as hard or not.


P.S is it just me or has anyone else had a problem not getting enough juice from those polaris factory installed winch wires?
 
See less See more
#2 ·
Well...so your happy and you did it yourself.....there is nt any room anywhere under the plastics....of a Polaris..
 
#3 ·
I also bought a viper winch with the mounting plate for my 2012 400 and it has been sitting in the garage because i could tell the wiring was going to take a while. for the mounting plate i grinded off the nuts on there and just used bolts and nuts from the hardware store. I'm going to have my dealer to the wiring now that i read your post!
 
#4 ·
I just finished installing a 3500lb SuperWinch with a 1.6hp motor on my 07 700 EFI Sportsman and I used the factory power and ground wires for my install. The winch seems to works work perfectly. All of this being said, this is my first winch and I have never used any other ATV winch. My neighbor who has a 2500lb Warn helped me spool the synthetic rope and did not comment on any slow pull or lack of power.

I would appreciate someone speaking up and letting me know if I made a mistake by using the factory wiring before I head out for a long ride next weekend.

Thanks,
Jamie
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top