I have a Warn Endurance 12.0 winch on an ARB front bumper on my 80-series cruiser. I installed it last summer roughly following this thread: https://forum.ih8mud.com/80-series-tech/280038-warn-endurance-12-0-install-arb.html
The only thing I changed was I called ARB up to see what they thought. They recommended a couple pieces of flat iron to give the 1/2" spacing, so I used 2- 1/4" flat iron strips from home depot across the winch (you need lateral support across the winch, not between the 2 bolts close together, was a 48" piece cut into 4 pieces if I recall correctly), drilled holes and mounted it up. It was quick and fairly straight forward. I thought the install went fairly smooth and wasn't all that bad, a
job if you have cutting tools and a bench grinder.
Over the last several months, the winch has been through numerous Alaskan water crossings (mostly the Knik and its silt), pulled me up slick slopes, out of quick sand, through boggy ground, out of deep snow, and a family sedan out of a snow filled ditch.
Anyways, signs of trouble reared up the first time I used the winch. Neatly wound up on the drum, there is only about 2-3 wraps distance before you start rubbing on thick aluminum cross bars that hold the winch together laterally. This means if the cable winds up on the side, it binds in fairly short distance. So it finally came to a head pulling the family out of the ditch. It was quite cold (~5 F), and while winding the sedan up, I was waiting to hear the slight rub on the aluminum cross member before resetting. Well, it never made enough racket before a loud popping sound indicated something broke. The cross member had popped it's bolt through the alloy side mount. My bad, but it is annoying having so little room for the cable to wind up.
I bought the $100 part and rebuilt the gear side fairly easily while leaving the electric motor side still attached. It was surprisingly simple job. So I while I was putting the cable back on, I decided to check the cooling fan, which has only ever come on once during all my winching episodes. Nothing happened, so I poked the fan and it was frozen. So I pulled it apart to find this:
.
Anyways, water clearly got into the fan while mounted under the hood, against the fender behind the air intake. There really aren't any holes into the motor compartment, but it somehow it managed to fill up and corrode it badly. I did manage to loosen it up with machine oil and get it working again after popping off the top with the brushes. Now something is not giving it power out of the solenoid box, so I'll have to dig into that now to see what is either fried or broken. Even without the fan, the winch still works just fine for short pulls.
I think the main part is sealed fairly well and without the fan it is still a good winch. The fan is really a gimmick for reliability until they figure out how to seal it up, although, if it runs it will do its job cooling. If you have an endurance, I'd make sure to keep the fan intake pointed down to drain and run it every so often. My intake was at a 45 degree angle up, now it's down. I wouldn't push the winch very hard until you check the fan with the controller switch, just in case yours is rusted up. My other big concern is water draining down the hose and into the winch itself.
I've considered getting some of the thinner synthetic line that rates over 12k, but that's probably a sure bet to bend the drum. Thinner line will exert more pressure at the same loads. So I'll be sticking with steel cable for now and hopefully I can get the fan up and running again.
The only thing I changed was I called ARB up to see what they thought. They recommended a couple pieces of flat iron to give the 1/2" spacing, so I used 2- 1/4" flat iron strips from home depot across the winch (you need lateral support across the winch, not between the 2 bolts close together, was a 48" piece cut into 4 pieces if I recall correctly), drilled holes and mounted it up. It was quick and fairly straight forward. I thought the install went fairly smooth and wasn't all that bad, a
job if you have cutting tools and a bench grinder.Over the last several months, the winch has been through numerous Alaskan water crossings (mostly the Knik and its silt), pulled me up slick slopes, out of quick sand, through boggy ground, out of deep snow, and a family sedan out of a snow filled ditch.
Anyways, signs of trouble reared up the first time I used the winch. Neatly wound up on the drum, there is only about 2-3 wraps distance before you start rubbing on thick aluminum cross bars that hold the winch together laterally. This means if the cable winds up on the side, it binds in fairly short distance. So it finally came to a head pulling the family out of the ditch. It was quite cold (~5 F), and while winding the sedan up, I was waiting to hear the slight rub on the aluminum cross member before resetting. Well, it never made enough racket before a loud popping sound indicated something broke. The cross member had popped it's bolt through the alloy side mount. My bad, but it is annoying having so little room for the cable to wind up.
I bought the $100 part and rebuilt the gear side fairly easily while leaving the electric motor side still attached. It was surprisingly simple job. So I while I was putting the cable back on, I decided to check the cooling fan, which has only ever come on once during all my winching episodes. Nothing happened, so I poked the fan and it was frozen. So I pulled it apart to find this:
.
Anyways, water clearly got into the fan while mounted under the hood, against the fender behind the air intake. There really aren't any holes into the motor compartment, but it somehow it managed to fill up and corrode it badly. I did manage to loosen it up with machine oil and get it working again after popping off the top with the brushes. Now something is not giving it power out of the solenoid box, so I'll have to dig into that now to see what is either fried or broken. Even without the fan, the winch still works just fine for short pulls.
I think the main part is sealed fairly well and without the fan it is still a good winch. The fan is really a gimmick for reliability until they figure out how to seal it up, although, if it runs it will do its job cooling. If you have an endurance, I'd make sure to keep the fan intake pointed down to drain and run it every so often. My intake was at a 45 degree angle up, now it's down. I wouldn't push the winch very hard until you check the fan with the controller switch, just in case yours is rusted up. My other big concern is water draining down the hose and into the winch itself.
I've considered getting some of the thinner synthetic line that rates over 12k, but that's probably a sure bet to bend the drum. Thinner line will exert more pressure at the same loads. So I'll be sticking with steel cable for now and hopefully I can get the fan up and running again.
