Mounting a Winch Solenoid box under the Hood
Many of the winches available these day's have either an integrated solenoid box or a remote solenoid box. In either case the manufacturer usually has it mounted high above the winch, right in front of the radiator. This can cause some problems with cooling. (I noticed a 5 degree change.) If you happen to have a remote solenoid box, you'll quickly find that the plastic will start to oxidize andl harden over time. Not to mention the box is not waterproof and is easily removed, either by owner or third party.
Now if you have a remote solenoid box, you have some choices since you can mount it anywhere. Although the cables for M8000 were too short to move it anyplace other then the location Warn suggests. Even there the ground wire was too short to go where they were supposed to.
A quick trip to my nearest welding supply and I had bought some 4 gauge cable (stock cables were only 6 gauge). The cable is very flexable in comparison to the stuff warn supplies. Since I wasn't sure where I was going to mount the solenoid box, I ended up buying some extra length of cable. Turns out only 9 ft. of cable were needed to move the solenoid to the passenger side inner fender. I was able to reuse the ground so that only leaves three cables to the solenoid box. The connectors I used were the crimp-on style. These as it turns out were hard to find, most places only had the bolt-on connector which were to bulky to fit into Warn's boot covers.
To be able to reach the inner front fender, about 3ft. of the cable is needed. Most likely, you'll end up using a hacksaw since the cable is too thick for normal cutters. Once all the cables are cut to length you will need to attach the connectors. If you don't have the special crimping tool you can use a center punch or anything else with a thin blunt end. To make it look cleaner and help protect the connector I applied some heat-shrink tubing. This is not necessary but I had some laying around so I used it. You can reuse the old angled boots with some minor cutting. They slip on as they did with the stock cables.
Then all you need to do is figure out some type of bracket to use or just bolt the box to the fender.
