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Offroad TechDiscussion pertaining to additions or questions which improve off-road ability, recovery and safety, such as suspension, body lifts, lockers etc
My SR5 '89 4Runner has that interior manual antennae control, which no longer works since the previous owner installed a permanent antennae. I want to wire this up-and-down antennae switch to work my winch in and out from the interior, so I won't have to always get out and plug my winch controller into my winch.
From what I can tell by looking at my controller, it appears there's probably only 3 wires to wire up, since there's only 3 connections on the plug, so it should be pretty simple. Also, I would be installing an on/off switch close to the interior buttons so I can't work the winch unless intentionally.
How many of you have done this mod?
Which guage wiring should I use?
Should I run a fuse somewhere along the power wire?
Any other tips I should know?
You don't need a fuse because the remote wiring is low amperage. It's just triggering the relay in the winch controller box. Putting in the on/off switch is smart. You can do that with a switch that interrupts the ground wire.
So I finally got around to doing this mod. I think I did a pretty good job: everything is clean. It did take me a good 4 hours to splice and wire everything, but overall, I love this mod!
My winch is the Superwinch LP8500. In the following picture, on the winch controller attachment wires, the black wire is the line IN, the white wire is the line OUT, and the red wire is the POWER. I didn't need to tap into any of the other wires.
Also, as you can see, I've wrapped the wires, drilled a hole in the cover, and installed a rubber grommet:
Some people recommended using a trailer wiring harness, since I can disconnect it if the need ever rises for me to remove the winch. There were only 4-wire harnesses available, so I bought that but one wire will not be used.
I ended up extending the wires inside the cab, for a total of about 7 feet of each wire. I ran the wires into the cab through the passenger firewall grommet (which I cut to push the wires through then sealed back up using black gasket material).
I cut the wires on the internal antenna switch itself, then wrapped the wires up, leaving me with the connector (now with short wires). On the connector itself, the green and yellow wire is the line IN, the all green wire is the line OUT, and both red wires are connected to one POWER wire (which is coming from the trailer harness attached to the winch, to my installed flip switch, then into the harness). The white and black wire is not used:
Here is the switch plugged in:
And here is the switch put back in its place:
The power wire is run into this switch from the splice from the trailer wiring harness in the winch (the switch needed to be grounded in order for the LED on the tip to work), and then back to the connector for the factory antenna switch. I mounted the switch in the lower left corner of the dash, right by the deck lamp switch:
This isn't the best picture, but here it is, lit up:
So, in order to work my winch from the inside, I flip the switch cover up, then flip the actual switch up (the LED will light up). On the button itself, the antenna UP switch lets the winch line out, and the antenna DOWN button pulls the winch line in.
I hope this will help if anyone chooses to go this route.
I added a switched 500Amp solenoid that powers both my front and rear winches along with an Anderson connector on the rear bumper for a set of heavy duty jumper cables.
I remote mounted the hand controller ports onto the bumpers and added a safety key switch inline with the hot lead on the port just in case some bratty kid wanted to have some fun with a paperclip
Also added OEM seat heater switches to the dash for in cab controls