By: TonyD

Gorilla Winch Installation

Winch mounted on our Suzuki Vinson

1. Mount the winch to the front of the ATV using a mounting plate designed for your ATV. The Gorilla winch comes with a generic mounting plate, but that plate wouldn’t mount to my bike so I ordered a mounting plate for my Vinson. The Gorilla winch mounted to the mounting plate with 4 screws. I used Loctite on all 4 screws. Once the winch is mounted to the plate, you need to put the winch in place. I had to remove the lower front plastic, so I could place the winch onto the bike. Once the winch is in place, the mounting plate gets screwed to the frame using 4 screws. I again used Loctite on all 4 screws. The roller fairlead is mounted to the front of the plate with 4 screws, also with Loctite. All mounting hardware was provided.

Winch wires covered in liquid electrical tape (2-3 coats) ensure a good connection even in very wet conditions.

2. Connect the wires to the winch. On the Suzuki Vinson, the 6-gauge wires are already there for a winch. So just connect them according to the winch installation instructions. Here's where I used liquid electrical tape (2-3 coats). I found the liquid electrical tape at Home Depot. Once the liquid electrical tape has completely dried, slip the boots over the terminals.

Contactor/relay switch

3. Mounting the contactor. On the Suzuki Vinson they ran the 6-gauge wires under the seat and placed them on top of the rear storage box. I pulled the cable back a little bit and reran the cable up through an opening between the battery and the box for the air filter. I removed the tool kit and used that spot for the contactor/relay.

Connection for the keyed hot wire.

4. Connect the two wires that come from the winch to the proper terminals on the contactor relay. Mine happened to be blue & yellow wires. The nuts on my contactor were color-coded. It was also noted in the instructions on which ones to use. Look at the image on the right.

5. Connect the red and black wires to the proper terminals on the contactor relay. Again the nuts on my contactor were color-coded. Do not connect to battery at this time. It was also noted in the instructions which ones to use.

Handlebar switch to control the winch

6. Choose a spot on your handlebar where you would be comfortable with the handlebar switch. I decided to slide mine down on the bar a little bit. Fish the switch wires down through the tunnel where the rest of the handlebar wires go and back to the contactor unit. I followed the preinstalled winch wiring, and also you want to leave enough slack so that you can turn the handlebars fully in both directions. You also need to tap the red wire into another wire that gets voltage only when the key is on. No thanks to my dealer who would not tell which wire they use to tap into, I found an orange wire on top of the rear storage box that has a bullet connector on the end while poking around using a test light. The red wire on the bike only ran about half way down on the bike. So I spliced another wire onto it and ran it back to the orange wire with the bullet connector. I twisted the wire on the red wire side using a wire nut and electrical tape. I then added a female connector on the other end of the wire and connected that wire to the orange wire.

7. Connect the red and black cables to the battery. Now, since I didn’t place my relay under the seat, I had some excess cable that I just looped around to take up the slack.

The winch is ready for use. The biggest pain was looking for that keyed hot wire but other than that, installing a winch is not that hard a task.