Winch Fault

[Ian2011]

hey all,

had to put the winch to use today and had some dramas with operation. The winch is a 12, 000 cheap jobbie that works fine when no load is on however when pulling car up hill, it was only operating for 5 - 8 seconds on average, release button and then work again for another short period, needless to say it achieved what it had to do but was a pain having to keep pressing/releasing the button. Is this a solenoid issue or some other more terminal problem, battery voltage was 11- 12 during operation so I'm sure that the batery is good.

All help appreciated

cheers

[Benno7]

How do you have it wired up? does it have an overload protection on it? any isolators on it?

[the ferret]

Like you said mate "cheap jobbie" lol.
You could use a snatch pulley, this would halve the load on the winch motor but would be half as fast.
Having your engine running also helps.
If your power cables are only light, this could also cause a trip out, as well as having a very good earth.
Cheers, the ferret.

[Ian2011]

No isolators fitted, used existing cabling that was supplied with the winch, might just check those earths as you mentioned Ferret could just be as simple as that. the only change I made when fitting was to run the power cable into a switch on the dash so apart from that it is stock. Engine was also on when winching so voltage shouldn't have been a problem, might load test the battery anyway

[Finly Owner]

When Running winch, inrase revsslightly also. but you probably know that.

Tim

[the ferret]

Dunno what sort of switch you have used, but heavy relay would be a good idea, use the switch to activate the relay /solenoid, otherwise you will melt the switch or wiring.
Cheers, the ferret.

[Ian2011]

Dunno what sort of switch you have used, but heavy relay would be a good idea, use the switch to activate the relay /solenoid, otherwise you will melt the switch or wiring.
Cheers, the ferret.

that could be where my problem is as I currently do not have any relay although I thought my switch was rated for the current I was drawing.

[Ian2011]

I have checked all earths and wiring terminals, have also found that when using the remote it will not winch in, only out, but one of the little black boxes is clicking. I have checked the overload protection and it was set just above min

[dsmith]

Remember as it gets hotter and works harder, the winch will draw more current. If it was under significant load and had been working hard up until it stopped you may find that it was pulling more current than the battery could sustain - even if the motor is running. My Tigerz11 cheapie 12000lb Grande winch pulls over 400 amps at full load (not unusual, heaps of cheaper winches will do that), my td42t alternator is only able to provide 100 amps back into the battery when up-idled. It won't take even a good battery too long to fail after trying to maintain 300 amps for much longer than a couple of minutes. An important thing to remember also is that at idle, most alternators (like mine) don't actually provide any charge to the battery, it needs to be idled up to about 1000rpm before it starts providing current.

[MudRunnerTD]

that could be where my problem is as I currently do not have any relay although I thought my switch was rated for the current I was drawing.

This will be your problem for sure mate. You want the cables to be as short as possible. Did you run the large cable from your battery to your incab switch then to the winch? or just a control wire to the Titan solenoid? If it goes straight to the solenoid on the hot side then it must be a Massive Switch !!!! Damn! Your switch will be getting cooked mate and will be a massive voltage drop. You need your incab switch to only be controlling the switch side of the solenoid (Light side) and for the switch to only be energising a Relay/solenoid and let the solenoid do all the work.

have you got any pics of your setup.

Note also that your battery could very well be knackered. between 11 and 12 is not optimum and your Winch is the BIGGEST load that your battery has ever seen, it is a very heavy and lengthy load and will drag the backside out of your battery fast.