Warn Zeon 12-S winch installation questions.

[J.Ralston]

Hello everyone!

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I have a 2021 JL Jeep Wrangler Unlimited Rubicon with the 3.6 liter V-6 and 8 speed automatic transmission. When I ordered the Jeep, I knew that I would be off roading it a lot and knew that I would be adding a winch and off road lights to it. As a result of that, when I ordered my Jeep, I ordered it with the steel bumper group and whatever other option that it was that made the Jeep come with the 4 auxiliary switches that come pre wired into the Jeep. With Jeep doing that, I thought that was a great idea on their part!​

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Here’s the deal. I have ran off road lights on my Toyota Tacoma 4x4 trucks before and have a good understanding of how they are supposed to work and get wired up. However, I have never ran a winch on any of my vehicles before so this will be a first time thing for me.​

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With my winch, I know that I can simply hard wire it in to the battery or I can wire it into 1 of the 4 auxiliary switches that are already pre wired into the Jeep. If I wire the winch directly into the battery, does it stay continuously on or does the winch itself also have a power on/off button?​

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If I wire the winch into 1 of the 4 auxiliary switches, which one do I need to wire it into considering that auxiliary switches 1 and 2 are for 40 amps I believe? And switches 3 and 4 are for 15 amps I think? Also, if I went the route of wiring the winch into 1 of the OEM auxiliary switches and the winch also had and on/off switch as well, could I leave the winches switch left on at all times since the auxiliary switch will also be controlling the power or would I also need to leave the winches on/off switch flipped to having the power off at all times when it is not being used and then when I decide to use it, turn the winch powered back to on as well as the auxiliary switch as well, that it’s wired into?​

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Thank you everyone for your help. It’s much appreciated!​

J.​

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[dpike]

if you pick up the solenoid kit you can wire it to the aux switches, otherwise it comes out of the box to direct hard wire it to the battery. personally, i left my battery connections loose (taped over) and close to my battery where i could connect it easily with wing nuts if/when its needed.

 

[BDinTX]

to expand on what @dpike said - you can only wire to the aux switches if you use the solenoid kit. the power cable for the winch is like a jumper cable, your aux wire is a 16 gauge I believe (about 3/16" thick). I have mine wired to the battery all the time, I don't know if there is any power draw without the controller plugged in but there isn't an on / off switch on mine.

 

[GtX]

A winch draws 300-450 amps so it can't be controlled through a 40 amp relay.

If you want to have a switch in the cab to control whether the winch has power or not you need to install a normally-open solenoid close to the battery. The solenoid goes between the battery and winch in the 12V+ line. You then run a switch to the solenoid. The switch controls the solenoid open/closed which controls power to the winch.

Warn makes a kit.
https://www.warn.com/power-interrupt-kit-62132

I used the Warn kit and you can see the top of the solenoid on the far left side of this image of the power rail in my JLURD.

 

[J.Ralston]

Thank you all for the advice and the help that you gave to me. I’ll just wire the winch directly onto the battery like almost everyone else did.

As soon as I can get the weather to cool down a bit when I have a day off, I can then go and get the winch installed. But as long as it’s in the 90’s and 100’s, screw doing that on one of those crazy hot days right now.

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