winch battery setup

I am installing a Warn EVO 10S. Should I replace my oem battery with a higher CCA one, and if so which one?. I am not interested in running a winch-dedicated battery.

 

Would it not be better to use the alternator and save you battery for starting the engine. It you do intend to use your battery extensively, I suggest a deep cycle battery. They can be run low repeatedly without as much reduced life.

 

You might go for a more Deep Cycle type battery. Perhaps an AGM. But if you go AGM, you may also want to get a tune that turns up the voltage to fully charge the battery.

 

When operating the winch you should always have the engine running and increase the revs slightly.

As stated above, if you purchase an AGM battery, you should get a tune to up the alternator output.

https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/the-northstar-agm-battery-voltage-booster-upgrade.604478/

 

I may have jumped to the wrong conclusion. This thread raised a question in my head that hadn’t been there before. How does the power output of the alternator compare to the battery?

I know the alternator produces more voltage and has enough power to run all the normal stuff while driving, but starting the engine likely requires significantly more power than anything the alternator has to supply. This makes me wonder if the battery can produce significantly more power than the alternator.

Winching likely requires power similar to starting the engine. If the battery is the primary power source, then upgrading the battery makes some sense to me.

Disclaimer: I’ve never owned a winch, but have it on my TODO list.

 

A winch can easily pull double (or more) what's needed to start the Tacoma, and the winch is going to pull that higher amperage for longer than the starter. While a battery is going to be able to put out more amps than the alternator alone, having them both together is going to make the available amperage the highest possible, and the stress will be spread.

 

Watch this thread then…

 

So if I were to go straight from the winch to the positive post of the cranking battery (where the alternator power dumps), would I be in effect using the combined battery and alternator power output?

 

If the engine is running, yes. Isn’t that the typical way to wire a winch? You might want to include an emergency cutoff. Battery shorts with big wires can melt steel. I’ve seen it in person.

 

Ok…never had a winch but had assumed that I'd have the engine running when operating the winch.

 

Since the winch wiring will heat up under use does it make sense to install a fuse or other protection in the line somewhere between the winch and battery? In my mind, I can hear my son saying, “Dad…you’re overthinking again.”

 

Not many fuses that can handle that kinda amperage. A battery shutoff switch is a good option. Just turn it off when you aren't using the winch. But honestly... most of us just run the cables straight to the battery without that extra precaution. But bad things CAN happen, as @gudujarlson mentioned.

 

A shorted winch (or battery) cable is something that has always been in back of my mind (say during a vehicle collision, rollover, etc.). I put a pair of 400A ANL fuses (stacked together, 800A total) inline with the negative lead to (hopefully) prevent a fire/melted steel.

If you're only going to run a single battery, then for sure you want AGM, and bigger too (grp 27 or 31).
The charging voltage thing shouldn't be an issue if you remember to put a charger on it overnight once a month or so (IMO, the Tacoma charge voltage is a bit low even for normal FLA batteries too, it really should've been closer to 14.2V, not 13.8V). But yeah a tune can take care of that as well.

 

so i deep-dove down this rabbit hole on reasons and specifications when i was installing my winch.

what i found was that there's generally a massive difference is the overall mindset, but also a misunderstanding of what winches pull for power.

in the offroading community, the general consensus is that no one should ever want to fuse anything with the winch. always wire direct to the battery. deep-diving into the people loudly stating this opinion, many are seasoned and competitive offroaders with dedicated trail rigs, and their mentalities start to show, where they'd much rather the vehicle burn to the ground trying to use the winch than fail the recovery and fail the race because a fuse popped. that's not exactly people i want to take at face value for modifications on a vehicle that i value enough to use to get to work.

me coming from the car audio world, ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING GETS FUSED WITH ZERO EXCEPTIONS!!! has been beaten into my head for every install for far more years than i can count.

this video, taking no-load amperage tests helped somewhat, if you can get past his out-of-breath-shouty personality. most of the of them are under 100A no load.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxFh3MmqUos


things get hinky after that. no one really publishes 'full load amps'.

many will provide a maximum amperage at maximum line pulling, but that's not full load amps. full load amps would be stalling the winch out. which can be a much higher number. this is very common in high voltage electrical uses like air conditioners and similar, but non-existent within the 12v world.

for harbor frieghts apex winch, their manual states that it's 350A at 12,000 pounds pulling. the warn vr evo, i can't find any amperage specifications. here's where the math gets really hinky. if you load up that harbor freight manual and go to page 2, it shows maximum line loads for different wraps on the winch drum, with a chart for the maximum pull strength to amperage.

winch load is based on the pulling load, but that is also a derivative based on the number of wraps on the drum. the more wraps, the less pulling power, but the more amps being consumed. but also important is that the winch load is derived from the horizontal pulling force, not the overall weight of the vehicle being pulled.

of you watch any of the offroad towing recovery channels on youtube, many are using that harbor freight winch, but most aren't getting past the 3rd or 2nd wrap on the winch drums, meaning that their maximum pulling power is somewhere in the range of 6800-9517 pounds. and many situations they get into, they don't double up the line with a snatch block. so despite all the crazy marketing, many of them are only working the winch at about 'half' it's rated pulling capacity. but it will pull near it's maximum amps at those ratings because of the leverage effect in place on the drum.

ok, lots of words up to this point.

so if you were to install a 300-600A breaker/fuse on the winch to protect the wiring, as everyone should be doing in the case of an accident that sheers the power cables(how many deer strikes are there?), the worst that's going to happen on a non-competition, non-life-threatening situation is that you'll be stuck somewhere and pop the breaker/fuse while exceeding the capabilities of your gear.

but this should be non-trivial. if the pull is that hard to be consuming the absolute limit of the power capacity of the winch, in a vehicle that i want to safely drive on the road next to everyone else, it means i'm being a dumbass--putting my gear, any nearby vehicles, and myself in a hazardous situation for absolutely no reason than my own laziness by pushing my gear to it's absolute maximum. putting a single snatch block in line will double the effective capacity of the winch--this will halve the power draw, but also consumes more line, dropping the number of wraps on the spool, which will drop the overall amperage the winch consumes during the pull even further.

what i've learned in all of this is if you're truly about safe, effective, and reproducible means of self-recovery outside of a fast-paced-big-money-race-situations where everything including the vehicle is disposable for the goal, there really shouldn't be any reason that a 300A breaker or fuse(take extra fuses!) can't handle the load. and if it doesn't, it means stop being a dumbass and break into the rest of your recovery gear, because a winch and mount is only half the purchase price.

the only reason anyone should really be exceeding even 10,000 pounds pulling is by double-snatch-blocking a 30,000 pound semi truck up a sheer cliff, but then your bumper mount rating for the winch and snatch block applies (typically the snatch block in that situation would be mounted on the same point as the winch, meaning your bumper would need to be rated to 20,000 pounds[10k pounds for the winch, 10k for the snatch block], which it's not), and you'll rip your bumper off far before the winch ever quit or hit peak load.

 

I'm planning to use a 200-250A circuit breaker between my battery and winch.

A typical 9500-12k rated winch seem to pull around 450A at max pull. Depending on the circuit breaker you're looking at, you'll want to find one that will give you a trip time around 40 seconds at that current draw. One this can be treated like a fail safe during heavy winching, but assuming shorter than 30s pulls when you're doing heavy recovery work, you should not be at risk of tripping it. Less than max pulls should give you plenty of time to operate the winch, you'll need to still observe the duty cycle of the winch either way.

This could be a good candidate here. But you should look at the documentation for any circuit breakers you find, and make sure you're not buying a cheap no-name chinese version that may or may not be rated for the current draw you're anticipating.

https://www.waytekwire.com/product/mechanical-products-174-s2-250-2-surface-mount

 

I went with this:



https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/lambtek-innovations-winch-switch-bracket-protect-your-investment.619464/

 

Here is what I ended up using when wiring up the winch...


https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetai...T/Tu55NOg8g==&countryCode=US&currencyCode=USD

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetai...EFiPMnQSjDQ==&countryCode=US&currencyCode=USD

Cheers

 

I think that I’ll install a switch for sure. Where would an appropriately sized fuse ideally be located?.. Between winch and switch or between switch and battery?