Hoping this shows up in somebody's future search.

I went with a mate to Levuka this weekend, him in his D4, to get to know the Defender better – including actually operating the winch for the first time since I had it installed late last year. Soon after arriving I removed the license plate and attempted to let out the line a bit so I could hang it from the UHF antenna, ready to go get stuck in a ditch.

The remote, which I had successfully played with in my driveway at home some months ago just to confirm it worked, didn't work. The wireless signal indicator showed zero bars out of five and attempting to enter the winch operation screen met with zero response. It did NOT show the little red X that you normally see if the car is off though. I was able to use a multimeter and confirm that there was power on the sense lines that run from the passenger side fuse box all the way around the engine bay to tell the winch controller when to turn on. Activating the wireless pairing option from the remote's menu just counted down the seconds and changed nothing.

In the manual it talks about a switch on the winch's control box that turns the wireless system on and off, and which is used during the pairing of a new remote. But the LR bar encages the winch completely and you can't even see the control box let alone find switches on it. Still, on the morning of the second day while old mate was still snoring I decided to poke around. There's a narrow rectangular grille through which you can see the rope spool, and it's fixed in place with seven external torx screws. Easy enough to pull that out (the Bahco S106 set is a damn fine way to fill a tool roll) and then if you have long fingers and skinny wrists like mine you can reach your right hand into the gap on the passenger side and feel behind and up the back of the winch controller. There's a little rubber-covered rocker switch poking out a bit, most likely in the "on" position.

Once you've found that switch, make sure your Defender electrics are all active (you can start the engine but don't need to), then enable pairing mode on the remote, then flick the switch. If it doesn't give you five bars of signal within a couple of seconds, flick it back the other way again.

Boom. My winch worked. I went out and merrily failed to climb a steep deep rutted hill and nearly pulled my mate down on top of me sideways using the silly thing. He was supposed to be my anchor! Then after I backed down and retreated up the other side of the gully (in reverse!) I had to actually recover *him* when he decided to follow me *forwards* and found his D4 unable to complete the ascent. So winches rock.

PS: you just might be able to re-pair your remote without taking off the grille, but I only thought of this afterwards and have no way to confirm. So as your reward for reading my ramblings, you get to try this first. Leave the car power OFF. Put the remote into pairing mode. Hit the start button on the dash. Let me know if that works out for you

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