12v Winch Wiring

[rekogniz11]

I saw a thread once but cannot seen to find it that had the correct way to wire a 12v winch to the 24 v system. My batteries are ran in series and from what I remember is was as simple as hooking up to the positive and negitive on one battery but just dont want to do this till I have confirmation. I was also wondering if there is a way to just do a third seperate battery and still have it charge off the 24v system (isolater)?

[Kirby]

it was strongly suggested to NOT hook up to one battery. The charging system would notice a drop in volts and charge the batterieS... this in turn would over charge the battery that was not hooked up.

Best advice was - get a 24 volt winch instead. I happen to be in your same situation, I have a 12 volt winch and it looks pretty mounted on the Pinz, but the previous owner mounted the 12 volt winch, and I have been lucky enough to never need it! (It is not wired to the Pinz)

I am sure others will give more detailed advice, but bottom line is written above!

[rekogniz11]

Thank you for the information! I am still wondering if there is a way to run a third battery with an isolator to charge the third battery off of the stock system. I will not be replacing this winch anytime in the near future so I do need to find an economical way to make this work (third batt, converter etc). Plus I do not see myself using this much besides the occasional help a friend out or help myself out situation in the trails or snow.

[man on the mule]

i have a warn 9.0 rc 12 volt that im running off of 24 volts. i saw that several guys on another forum were doing the 12volt on a24 volt system and a tec guy gave all sorts of reasons why it can be done. i have run 6 volt starters off of 12 volt for years (old cars ,tractors etc.)with no problems , so i decided to try it because my winch does duty on several dodge trucks for tree service as well as on the pinz. it works like a winch on stroids. it is faster ( as are the 6 volt starters on 12 volts ) and has more line pull. care not to over pull the line and care for the faster speed is a must. it seems nuts but there seems to be little or no differance in running temperature. i would not recomend it for a cheepo winch or a winch with permanant magnets. if it works for you ,great if not ,opps. it is working for me.

[M Wehrman]

My 4-legged riding,2-legged friend and my self have had a few talks about this. his internet service can be a real pain,dumping his more detailed explainations about this. It would seem that a quality SERIES WOUND winch motor is quite tolerent of this practice,as discussed on other 4x4 forums. This would make life easier as finding a winch in 24V is a lot harder than a 12V one. My preference is to look at used ones for sale,as most people seem to carry them around and never use them.
On the flip side,I run 2 yellow tops charged by a solar panel, parallel for 12V. If I run those down I wouldn't be able to get there from here anyway! I would try the 24-12 idea to free up batteries for my other toy,but I am running a 9K Harbor Freight winch. I have used it in several "real" pulls w/o any issues,but there is a limit to a lower priced winch and until I need the batts for something else it will stay that way.

Have A Happy Thanksgiving Everyone !

Mark

[EvanH]

I have a 12 V hitch on the rear of my Pinz. I installed home-made battery boxes on either side of the rear, between the rear tire and the taillights. The two batteries are wired in parallel to the winch and to the other 12 V accessories.

I am using a 24V/12V battery equalizer to charge the secondary 12V system. However, the eqalizer was not designed for this kind of service, and it kept blowing fuses. So I need to buy or build a 12V charger that takes 24V as input.

If you only use your 12V winch once in a blue moon, you can probably get away with connecting it across one battery and using the battery equalizer to restore the battery balance after the winching is done. The battery-killing most often happens when you run a small but constant discharge from one battery, such as a 12V radio.

On a side note - I am using a MileMarker 12V winch. My rationale was that I could use the money saved buying an inexpensive 12V winch to pay for the rest of the secondary 12V system and still come out ahead. However, both times I had to use the winch for real it failed. I now believe that winches are not a good place to try to cut corners and save money.

-Evan