Hooking up winch to main start up battery.

[LeighW Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close LeighW]

I have dual battery and a dc/dc charging system for the second battery. However, I would recommend the setup I have used for winching.
I have duplicated the winch cables and have run them directly from the winch to BOTH batteries using a switch between each battery and the winch. When both switches are ON, the batteries are connected together with maximum current available to the winch. With the car running just above idle, I can winch for a solid 2 minutes under full load until the batteries need time to recover (2 optimas).

Another advantage of having this system, it is essentially an override to the dual battery setup and allows jump starting the main battery if I ever have a problem with it.

Winches use a lot of power, some more than others, you want as much available to it as possible.

awwricecracker,

What switch did you use, can it handle the winch current?

Leigh

[awwricecracker Member Find all posts View Profile Close awwricecracker]

G'day Leigh,

These are the switches I use (1 at each battery to isolate them from the winch)

They seem to handle the current without issue.

http://www.altronics.com.au/index.as...=item&id=S2695

cheers,
Josh

awwricecracker,

What switch did you use, can it handle the winch current?

Leigh

[vk2ss55 Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close vk2ss55]

I'm sorry I don't agree with the damage the alernator theory . An alt is an AC generator and as such is impedance protected , that's why you don't need any current limit protection only voltage regulation .
Cheers Ross

[LeighW Avid PP Poster! Find all posts View Profile Close LeighW]

I'm sorry I don't agree with the damage the alernator theory . An alt is an AC generator and as such is impedance protected , that's why you don't need any current limit protection only voltage regulation .
Cheers Ross

Sorry Ross,

That's rubbish, you can burn out any generator if you overload it, that's why they have
overload protection built in to gensets. This would be same as saying an ac motor or a transformer has internal impedance so you can't burn it out by overloading it!

An alternator is no different, a high quality regulator may have overload protection built
in, another way is to limit the excitation, to produce it's output the rotor (an electromagnet) needs to be supplied current, by careful design one could arrange it so that once the output voltage of the alterrnator is pulled below a certain voltage then their wouldn't be enough voltage to drive the rotor magnet and the ouput of the alternator would reduce, this may apply to most alternators in use though these days but as to how effective it is?

The problems is the alternators are built to a price, running any item at 100% or above is asking for trouble.

Interestingly no car manufacturer will warranty an alternator that has failed due to obvious overloading.

As I wrote above, a simple search of the net will return many instances of alternators being burnt out during winching operations, simple fact.

Leigh

[prado2004 Advanced Member Find all posts View Profile Close prado2004]

Mine is hooked to the crank battery, my second battery is in the cargo bay so the cable run would be too long to got there. So far no issues, but more to the point, I have never heard of anyone stuffing the alternator or the ECU from a winch.

Cheers Andrew

Have to agree with andrew. My 12,000 pound winch is off my main battery. Ive winched for pretty long periods in one hit, always left the engine running and have never had a drama.

Not saying that the stuffing alternator or ecu isn't true, but i haven't experience issues with doing it.