Winch & Ignition wiring / earth separation

[roppa]

Hi All,

Just trying to wire my winch (Warn ep9000) direct to the battery after repositioning it behind the fron seats, and wanting to avoid overloading the battery cut off switch...running a + and - direct from the winch to the battery terminals.

Have also wired the battery (only one battery) as standard to the starter and - to the chassis. The - lead has a battery cut off switch like I said...the ones with the red keys.

Confusion is that when I switch the key OFF it does not cut out the main electrical systems. It did before I wired the winch direct...so wondering if there is an earth perhaps from the winch body now that I have a - cable direct to the battery? Or is there something else I have misunderstood??

Any ideas?

Cheers

Colin

[teamidris]

Spot on. You bypassed the battery cut off with the earthing effect of the winch body. I bypassed my winch fuse the same way
It is far simpler to move the red key to the positive terminal now you have multiple loads. Or in this case, 2 positive red keys for winch and vehicle electrics.

It sort of goes like this;
No winches - go negative cut off so there is less risk of the terminal bolts shorting out.
Winches - go positive cut off's to save my brain

[roppa]

Hi Teamidris,

Thanks for the reply, pleased to get to the bottom of it so quickly!

OK, so if I don't want to make my recently fitted cut off switch redundant I need to do a bit more work. The main reason for trying to 'go round' the switch with the winch was to prevent high currents as I understand its only good for 100 amps continuous. Also I felt the winch performance had dropped since running it through the switch...or maybe that was just me!

Anyway, maybe try a heavier duty switch or knock something up myself and keep the current wiring will be my first effort but away to give it some thought.

Cheers

[Hooli]

Use a kill switch to control a winch solenoid that's in the feed line as a cut off?

[teamidris]

Oooh no, don't make it redundant
Just change it to pos switching. It's normal to finish up with a load of spare high-current wires in a box in the garage. You can play swopsies with your mates. Its like 4x4 tradition. Plus you'll use them on the rear winch. Myself and friend SteveB are often raiding each other stores
Then put another pos switch for the winch, or like hooli says, a remote one. It isn't that the red key is too small for the winch (which it is). It's that it needs seperate switching because a switch failure can occur and you don't want to loose the trucks cut off. Better to seperate and only loose the truck power or the winch.

I'm still recomending a big fuse. Even more important with one battery I recon

[RichardD]

+ve cut out switching is the easiest and IMO safest way.

I have 3 cut out switches: one for each of the 2 winches and a main solenoid cut out switch that is controlled from a switch on the dash MSA style.

The main [red] positive cable from the batteries to the main solenoid is 75mmsq then I have 55mmsq to the starter/fusebox (its an LR TD5) and each of the winch cut outs. This means I can run with the winches isolated but if there's an emergency one switch kills absolutely everything.

My brain was melted by trying to wire the ecu/engine kill circuit into the dash switch so the engine, ecu and main +ve supply were all killed at once. Get a couple of wires wrong and you are looking at powering the entire car from a 1mm wire!!!

[roppa]

All good reading guys and think another switch on the + end is on the cards!

Cheers for the advice