Wiring a utility winch
 

Hey guys,

So over the holidays I bought a Champion 4500lb ATV wireless remote winch and some accessories to mount and and use it. I will be using it on the rear trailer hitch for work purposes mostly so hold you warnings about pulling power and mount location, I know.

The wireless remote has a small red wire thats meant to be wired into the ATV ignition, not for power as it has a 7.5 amp fuse but so that the control module can only have power when the vehicle us on. If that didn't make sense its because I know nothing about electricty/wiring.

My question is where do I wire this on the Dakota. I talked to my old man who told me that there were places in the fuse box to wire it, but that conversation didn't get far before he started using engineering terms I don't know. I tried using the wiring diagrams in the service manual but that was meaningless to me.

Any help would be massively appreciated. Elsewise I'm wiring this sucker to the fog lights. That'll work... probably... right? Yea.

Oh and ELI5 if you can.

So, the winch control will stay in the cab? why not the power port in the dash? or the radio power wire.

I don't know the exact colour of the wires in question, but those would be the two that i would think to tap into. The radio may be the best choice because the power port in the dash can be changed from ignition power to battery power by changing a fuse location.

Control module is currently zip tied (it's temporary) to the frame and wires are run to the rear. There is a wireless receiver that is connected to the control module for negative and has a small positive lead that's meant to be wired into the ignition so that the wireless receiver doesn't drain the battery when the vehicle is off. I've live wired the receiver to the battery for now but that's a pain in the a** since I have to unwire and rewire it each time I want to use the winch. Wiring it to the radio sounds like a good idea especially since there are usually loads of DIY write ups on radio stuff. I'll look at it after work tomorrow.

Ok so apparently the wireless receiver uses barely any power. I left it hooked up to the battery and my truck sat for 4 days. Started up with no problem so I'm just going to leave it as is.

Ive got my interior 12v set for power on ign/acc. This is where i tied in my backup cam monitor. This way the battery cant drain. Ive tied other things into switches so i can turn them on if the truck is off. (just installed a 126w LED light bar)