UTV Battery and Winch Problems

Couple of problems I’m currently dealing with on my Tracker side-by-side/plow.

A few weeks ago the battery post on the negative terminal melted while plowing. A shop told me that the connection may have been loose, creating heat or a spark. So I installed a new battery and the next time out I was plowing for about 2 hours and the same thing happened. Had Tracker come get it and look at it since I thought it might be something further with the cables or where it was connected to the frame. They called today and said they hooked up to a working battery and everything seems fine, nothing in the cable system seems loose. I reminded them that I had melted the battery post on two batteries now so I wanted to be sure it didn’t happen again. I was told that maybe the connection was working itself loose while in use and that I should check it periodically. Does that seem normal? Maybe it does, I’m not very strongly mechanically inclined. I’ve just never had problems with this before, this is the third winter I’ve plowed with it and just now having problems. Nothing found at all, just told to check the connections every so often. If that’s a legit fix or preventative measure that’s fine, I just want to be sure they’re not missing something further.

The other problem is with my winch and winch frame. During the phone call I was told the winch is not working and would have to be replaced, because the plow was pushed up too far and now the frame is bent. Does it seem right that the whole winch would need to be replaced? Again, I’ve got very limited knowledge so maybe it’s all totally legit. But the guy didn’t mention any form of repair or individual part replacement, just said the whole thing would need to be replaced, so I’m just wondering if anyone has any other ideas.

Thanks for reading.

Sounds like you’ve got too much resistance in the wiring. Check for a crimped wire, a bad connection to the pump, etc. If the connection isn’t strong enough, it’ll burn up your wiring all over the place. I burned up a cable on my boat that was hidden in the sheath between the battery and the motor a few years back. Everything looked fine until I did some deep digging.

Dan wrote:

was told that maybe the connection was working itself loose while in use and that I should check it periodically. Does that seem normal?

No. The odds of two batteries having terminals working their way lose in such a short time are non-existent. Something else is wrong.

That black cable is the ground and it’s going to run off of the battery post and connect somewhere to the frame to supply the ground. I strongly suspect the issue may be that you have either:

A) a corroded connection where the ground connects to the frame and this is causing resistance and heat or …

B) you have damaged the ground cable with excess heat so it is no longer able to carry the high amperage load required when using the winch.

Obviously, Tracker service is completely clueless, so if you follow their advice you’re just going to burn up another battery. Here’s what I’d do:

1. Find out where the negative (black) cable off of the battery meets the frame. Undo the connection bolt. Report back to us, was there obvious rust or corrosion here that looks like it could cause the issue? Take a picture and post it.

2. I would then replace the whole ground cable with a new one. There is just too much chance that the cable has been damaged or is too cheap to handle the load. Do NOT get a replacement from Tracker, replace with a pure copper ground cable from a reliable aftermarket parts company.

3. We need to talk about the wire running to your winch. Was this wire and winch pre-installed when you bought it? Or did Tracker or somebody else install the winch as an aftermarket part?

Winches must draw huge amounts of current, so the wire used MUST be able to supply it properly. Undersized wire will heat up dangerously and can even cause a fire. Wire must be sized properly for both the current load AND the length of the run.

Winch wire must again be pure copper and it must be sized to the length of the run accounting for all splices and other factors that add resistance.

The issue with your winch and frame can’t be solved by a text description. Need pictures and eyes on to really help with that one.

Appreciate the responses guys. Grouse unfortunately my Tracker is currently at the Tracker center in Woodbury (Cabelas) so I can’t get eyes on anything at the moment. I’m not sure what routes I can take as the consumer but I plan on escalating this as much as I can. I have contacted the CSM of the store and one of the service supervisors detailing the problems I’ve had up to this point and letting them know I can’t accept a result with them just putting a new battery in without a real solution. I’m not saying I need a place to say “this will never happen again” but some form of assurance or confidence in their work is all I’m asking.

Crappy situation for sure. Grouse gave some really good advice.

Switching gears but on the same topic, this would be a good reminder to make sure your insurance policies are up to date and adequate, both homeowners as well as the toys like the SxS. Especially with this situation in mind, I’d be double checking policy coverage for a fire.

Dan wrote:

Appreciate the responses guys. Grouse unfortunately my Tracker is currently at the Tracker center in Woodbury (Cabelas) so I can’t get eyes on anything at the moment. I’m not sure what routes I can take as the consumer but I plan on escalating this as much as I can. I have contacted the CSM of the store and one of the service supervisors detailing the problems I’ve had up to this point and letting them know I can’t accept a result with them just putting a new battery in without a real solution.

Keep on them.

There is a ZERO percent chance that the cause of this problem is a loose terminal unless they found a loose terminal. And then there is even less chance that it happened twice.

Leading suspects are a bad ground, undersized wires that feed the winch, or the winch is bad and is overheating.

Insist that they actually find the problem, not just guess at what it could have been.

What model Tracker is this? Those are made by Arctic Cat so I wonder if a Cat dealer could work on it. Nothing like having it serviced at an outdoors store boosts confidence. My dad bought his ATV years ago from Gander Mtn and they had no clue and actually cost him a motor because they didnt install the wet clutch seal properly.

Once in a while I will have an outboard come in with a starter problem, I do a voltage drop test from the ground point on the motor to the battery post.
If I find nothing there I will do the same test on the positive cable, from the post on the starter/main relay back to the positive post on the battery.

Most often regardless of which cable it is, I have found corrosion a ways down the cable from the eyelet and you can only find it by cutting the insulation away, but, I only wreck a cable after the voltage drop test to confirm that cable is suspect.

With that out of the way, what I am wondering is if you have had this set up for at least a year or more and there is corrosion on/in any of the cabling at the plows motor or where its ground point is at on the frame.
My point is, snow intrusion could of started the corrosion and now its to the point where this problem showed up.
The only way to tell is to perform the voltage drop test as I described.
I hope that makes sense.

Iowaboy1 wrote:

With that out of the way, what I am wondering is if you have had this set up for at least a year or more and there is corrosion on/in any of the cabling at the plows motor or where its ground point is at on the frame.
My point is, snow intrusion could of started the corrosion and now its to the point where this problem showed up.
The only way to tell is to perform the voltage drop test as I described.
I hope that makes sense.

I was also thinking that I’d like to do the voltage drop test on his winch to determine if he has some damaged wire/splices/connectors that are providing excessive resistance.

I can easily see how either an OEM or a kit that came with a winch could have undersized wire, especially for extended winch use.

Also, new line of thinking. There should be a fuse inline on the winch + cable. Did someone remove or not install this fuse so now the wire is overheating and burning up?

But this is all diagnostics 101, so Cabelas/Bass Pro, in theory, should have their “techs” doing all this stuff, right?

Gitchi Gummi wrote:

Crappy situation for sure. Grouse gave some really good advice.

Switching gears but on the same topic, this would be a good reminder to make sure your insurance policies are up to date and adequate, both homeowners as well as the toys like the SxS. Especially with this situation in mind, I’d be double checking policy coverage for a fire.

As long as you’re not using it recreationally your HO’s insurance will cover it.
It would be no different than your lawnmower or snow blower catching on fire.

Long story, but it did work out in my favor.

I would think if the wire for the winch is too small of gauge it would melt or burn up before the battery post melts.

mxskeeter wrote:

I would think if the wire for the winch is too small of gauge it would melt or burn up before the battery post melts.

Probably right and that’s why my first thought was to check and replace the ground. But I would HOPE that the Bass Pro tech would at the very least know how to do this. “Hope” being the key word…

So that got me wondering are they aren’t both burnt or damaged and it just happened the battery was the first to actually fail because that was the point of most resistance. No way to tell without looking at it, but I’ve just seen too many generic mechanic wiring rigging jobs on high amperage devices, so I can’t just skip by them and assume they are done correctly because most of the time even the factory has undersized the wire or failed to account for resistance added by other factors.

I bet the positive cable is rubbing on the frame/ground somewhere causing lots of current draw on the battery causing the melting terminal. I say this because we had a car in the Ian flood down in Florida and the salt water reached the battery it was so deep and the negative post melted from the salt water acting like a short between the terminals. I bet when he lifts the plow it shorts out a wire to the motor causing the problem. $20 on it. If it was to small of a wire anywhere that wire would melt and open up creating an open circuit. Only thing that melt a terminal is a short.

I wonder if they connected the ground for the contactor to the frame instead of running it direct to the battery

Just posting an update here and a thanks to all that took the time to weigh in on this. After my post I was gone for work and then vacation for about a 2-week stretch so I wanted those that weighed in to know I wasn’t ignoring you.

Looooooooooong story….

After being told that Tracker would need to replace the winch and battery, and that nothing was really found wrong with the power system, I was told to just check the connection periodically while I was plowing it. I can do that….but that shouldn’t be a normal condition to have to worry about melting your battery terminal posts constantly. I contacted someone in management/supervision at Tracker and gave them details and told them that I could not accept doing the same thing and expecting different results. Without really looking into the matter I was, as many of you mentioned, running a fire risk every time I ran that thing. Thanks to a lot of good insight from a lot of you it got me thinking and I knew I didn’t want to have to worry about a fire with my kids inside this thing, or burning my garage down every time I ran it.

That contact must’ve done some good because they looked into the matter a little further. Nothing major happened but they did notice that with the plow frame being bent up it also took the power cable to the winch with it, putting it at a strain and an angle it shouldn’t have been. So that was replaced and they also redid the connection to the battery making sure (according to them) everything would be snug on the connection.

Still had to battle some miscommunication issues as roughly 10 days ago I told them I’d be gone and they could drop it off Tuesday the 21st. They said they’d call Monday the 20th to run the payment and verify everything. No phone call Monday and by yesterday morning I’m looking at a potential 2-foot snowstorm and haven’t gotten my Tracker/plow yet. I called them and they said they’d call me back. An hour later with no phone call I replied to an e-mail conversation I’d been having saying I was fully ready for it to be dropped off, and the reply stated they were waiting to hear from me and still needed payment (contrary to our earlier phone call). After playing phone tag all afternoon I finally got things confirmed and it was dropped off around 4pm yesterday. One of the guys that dropped it off was one of the techs that worked on it summarized some of the things they did and also said they put a new battery cable in in case that was a part of the problem (which I suggested at the start and would have been nice to know).

I did a little plowing last night and really took it easy. In less than about an hour I probably stopped to check the battery connections about 5 times and everything seems good so far, but I’ll continue to keep a close eye on it.

Again, long story, not that anyone cares, but some of you did ask questions so I didn’t want to ignore any of you, and I’m truly grateful every time the IDO community takes the time to offer advice and help other members out.

Nice to have an update on these things just to know how it ended up. It would have been nice to have a “there’s your problem lady” moment with this thing so you knew for sure the cause had been found.

Keep watching and carefully feeling the wires for signs of overheating.

The fact that this problem appeared after a number of years of use makes me suspect corrosion is the culprit. I would want to check and recheck frame grounds and connections routinely.

I wondered about running the cable in so far as to bend the plow frame. Easy to do (I’ve pulled the end of my cable off doing the same thing) but that’s got to draw a huge surge of current which could feasibly cause heat damage. Come to think of it I don’t remember if there is a fuse between the winch contactor and the winch, or anywhere between the battery and winch. I guess I’ll have to check.