Charge wire on electric winch???

I installed an electric winch on my trailer. I have done this one other trailers but the winch batteries were the only ones on the trailer. This trailer has a battery towards the back of the hydraulic tail unit. That battery already is factory wired into not only the pickup plug to charge but also a solar charger to keep it charged when not in use. The easiest way to hook the winch batteries into the sealed harness would but to run a wire back to the existing battery. This way they would be charged by both the pickup and solar too.

Now I am thinking of running a 10 gauge wire between the sets of batteries. The putting a 30 amp circuit breaker at each battery. This way if the wire is shorted out both supply sides would trip a breaker.

Anyone see any problems with doing it this way.

Nope, and the breaker will also prevent burning up the 10ga wire if one set of batteries is near dead or lose a cable connection which may them try to take too many amps for a 10ga wire from the other battery.

That will keep it from pulling the battery down , I would probably use a 20 breaker then you will be sure and not drain the battery.

JD, YES Id use a properly sized fuse or breaker at BOTH batteries is my short answer........


What you will be doing is essentially connecting the two batteries in parallel which is okay, however, when two batteries are to be wired in parallel it's BEST if the two are IDENTICAL in size and type and age etc. so one (the weaker) don't feed off the other PLUS they be wired and configured so both receive equal charge and equal loading to the best extent possible. Yes Billy Bob and Bubba who did otherwise and had no problems, I'm ONLY saying it can still "work" even if not wired the best possible way, but its best if done so.

AS far as wire size and overcurrent protection and for improved equal charging and loading, the bigger the wire connecting the two batteries the better to reduce line voltage drop. YES 10 gauge will "work" to provide some degree of charge to both batteries even if NOT equal.

NOTE when running wire from one to another more remote battery, especially if the run is long and/or the wire is small, and especially if the two batteries aren't identical, the chances of equal charging is reduced BUT YES YOUR IDEA STILL "WORKS".

Indeed if you use 10 Gauge wire having an ampacity of thirty amps, a 30 amp overcurrent protection device AT EACH BATTERY can suffice. An auto reset breaker has an advantage over having to replace a blown fuse HOWEVER if there's a fault it will just keep resetting and can fully discharge a battery where a blown fuse will clear the fault until you fix the problem and may NOT totally discharge the battery. YOUR CHOICE

Another consideration is whether or not the tow vehicle truck is to be left connected when operating the winches or hydraulics ?? Sure if connected and running the trucks alternator can deliver some degree of charging amps but the winch will be drawing current from the truck as well as the trailer batteries unless a diode is used.

For those who are under the mistaken impression the way batteries are wired in parallel makes no difference READ THE URL LINK TO SEE WHY IT MAKES A HUGEEEEEEEEEEEEE DIFFERENCE

As usual an electrical question draws out more opinions then most topics, mine included lol

Best wishes and God Bless

John T
Battery Parallel Wiring

John I actually want the circuit breaker to protect against the batteries feeding each other operating power rather than just charging each other. The hydraulic tail only has a single 12 volt deep cycle battery. I used two larger batteries on the winch. They have double the CCA over the single battery. My thinking being the winch will take more AMPs over a longer time. The tail only takes less than a minute to raise or lower. I was worried about the batteries trying to power each other through the charge wire. That is why I am thinking that a 20 or 30 AMP circuit breaker would allow them to charge but would trip if they tried to pull the operating current needed for the lift or winch.

Good thinking, indeed a 20 or 30 amp breaker wouldn't allow any more then that to flow yet still provide a degree of charging amps. Even if not an ideal situation, IT WORKS FOR ME.............Go for it

John

Back when a lot of us guys were using slide in truck campers we had something called a battery isolator. It has 3 taps on it, the center tap is the input and the other two each go to one battery. The batteries are charged together but will not draw on each other. They were fairly cheap I think you can still buy them. HTH Jf

Don't know if y'all know about them?- Aircraft circuit breakers- the older ones had to be manually reset, and the newer ones can double as a switch, as you can manually turn them on or off. We have mounted them on the older tractors which originally had little to no fused protection.

The diodes loose 0.5 to 0.7 volts, combined with the length of wires and the resulting voltage drop will make battery charging slower.

Where are you going to get the juice to charge these batteries? In the winter my truck batteries get down pretty good over night and it takes the best part of 10 hours to charge them up with a 150 amp alternator. If your truck has a standard alternator you won't get them charged in the hour or so you are likely to be driving. Also if your thinking standard automotive breakers, the kind that are 1/2" think and an inch long with 2 studs out the top, they won't hold up to that. They are designed to reset quickly so for a long pull like on a winch they will quickly overheat and fail. I've tried this before and it didn't work for me. The battery isolater mentioned is what you need and then put it on the charger at home to make sure it's up all the way. The truck will top it off each use and keep it from foing bad, but I doubt it will recharge it after a good pull.

John wouldn't two diodes work. The charge wire from truck would be split into two wires . One to charge the back battery and the other in the line to the front batteries.

It would allow the wire from the truck to charge the back battery and to charge the front batteries, but not allow the front batteries to pull a load from the back batteries. Or back to draw from the front.



Am I thinking right??

I forgot to say with a diode in each of the charge wires.