Ranger Mods

When I had the Wildtrak fitted out I selected a Warne Zenon Platinum 12000 lb. winch with their "Enhanced Signal Kit". Okay ALL the Zenon range of Warne winches are ONLY remote wireless controlled, there is no cable connection available . I used mine in 2018 to haul a mate out of a boggy clay pan in the Simpson Desert and possibly a year later operated it again to check the nylon cable and rewound it after washing Fraser Island salt and sand out of the cable,
On Thursday I went to use the winch to drag my 7x4 off road trailer into a convenient out-of-the-way location in the front garden - nothing happened, no winch !! Normally a series of "bars" appears on the remote hand held controller screen to indicate signal strength -- all it showed was a red "X" for no signal.
Back to 4X4 Offroad in Bathurst and they pulled the control box apart to find a tiny wire, no more than 0.5 m in dia had come out of the silicon sealed PCB and this was the vital connection to the ariel - so so signal and no operation ! Just how it came out is a total mystery but 4X4 weren't prepared to try to repair it.
Next week they will install the original control unit that I still had -- so my question is has anyone else got one of these units and if so just how much further does the "enhanced" ariel allow winch operation and to be aware that this tiny wire can vibrate over corrugations and come out of the PCB.
I'll gently remove the thick layer of silicon and re-connect the ariel wire and set it aside should I ever decide to have it reinstalled.

All up the Warne winch, the "enhanced signal kit" and its installation cost $4040.00 inc GST - I expected a better service life from Warne. To date their only comment - ( through ARB their Australian agents ) has been "It's 5 months out of warranty" fortunately for me 4X4 Offroad have a better service philosophy !

Zenon range of Warne winches are ONLY remote wireless controlled, there is no cable connection available. ??

I have had a Zeon winch for 3 years which has cable connection.

saeb wrote: ↑Sun May 16, 2021 3:10 pm Zenon range of Warne winches are ONLY remote wireless controlled, there is no cable connection available. ??

I have had a Zeon winch for 3 years which has cable connection.

Sorry, it would seem that it's the Zenon "Platinum" range of winches that have no cable controls - to my eternal regret I should have read the specifications closer in 2017 when I specified it to be installed on the Wildtrak thinking that like my previous Warne winch on the Disco that they came with a cable and as an fairly expensive optional extra "add-on" a WiFi remote control.
I don't know what model you had but to me the 8 metre long hand held control cable wasn't nearly long enough so having a WiFi hand held seemed to be the way to go.

Okay, latest update.
Yesterday the boys at 4X4 Offroad at Bathurst pulled the Warne winch off the car, this involved the removal of the ARB bullbar as the Platinum 1200 winch is too large to be lowered down, Ron, the 4X4 Offroad manager, had even got into their stock - in anticipation - a brand new Zenon Platinum winch into his showroom stock in readiness to replace mine should it have been necessary. That is outstanding service.
The winch was first fitted with the standard remote control PCB unit and nothing, zilch - nothing was working, it was then stripped down and nothing could be found wrong with it, the motor is a brushless unit and none of the sets of helical gears had any teeth missing - then -- on reassembly and with a portable 12 volt power supply connected to it hey presto it worked !!
All the techs could think of was it somehow the sets of helical gears had "locked up" possibly due to the thousands of corrugations we have traveled over and the clutch wasn't able to fully engage, or disengage, and their advice to me was to operate it on a regular basis, say once a week, to try ensure it doesn't happen again.
We will see, meanwhile they have on order from Warne a "enhanced signal kit" PCB and when we return from the Kimberly in August we can make a suitable appointment and they, 4X4 Offroad, will install it, meanwhile the original PCB with its broken ariel wire is off to Warne to see if they can explain why the wire snapped off. Ron agrees with me, they will put a large "dob" of silicon over the wire on the new enhanced PCB where it comes out of the water-proofing to give it additional strength.
I'll update in late August if anyone's interested.