Winch draining battery

[jamied]

Hi all. I installed a winch on my patrol a few weeks ago and it seems to have completely drained my battery while off. I've made the assumption it's the winch because never had a problem with the battery and my old man has the exact same thing happen a cpl of yrs ago when he put a winch on his gq. I will probably go for the easy fix and just install an isolation switch on the main power to the winch but I'm just wondering why it would do this. All the wiring is exactly to the instructions given. Any help would be appreciated. Cheers

[4wdreaming]

I could be wrong but it Sounds like its leaking to earth at a join some where
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[healy]

yeah id say its wired wromg mate a winch wont drain your battery whilst not on. what winch you got? go over all wires you might have pulled one inside the box mate

[Bloodyaussie]

Would be interested to see how it is wired.

I have never heard of this myself? ?

[macca]

There is a load somewhere, a clip on amp meter will show if there is.

Or take the negative cable off the battery and touch it on metal away from the battery, if it sparks there is power being used somewhere.

Winches use no power at all when not winching in or out. Wonder if the brake is powered up and causing you a problem?

[teno45]

Brand new winch or second hand?
Does it drain the battery in a matter of minutes/hours or days?

[Yendor]

How quickly does it drain your battery?

I would say it's more then likely a problem with your alternator draining the battery when the engine is not running then your winch.

[Bloodyaussie]

Never came back to his own thread......???

[jamied]

Thanks for all the replies guys. Hadn't had a chance to get back to it till now. It's a new winch. Just one of those aldi winches. It's deffinatly wired correctly. Pretty hard to get it wrong really. All the cables from winch to control box are marked as are positive and negative to the battery. It seemed to be draining over a period of around a day. Hard to say for sure as I don't drive the old girl every day. I've replaced the battery earth cable and terminal and cleaned up where it goes to so will see if that makes a difference

[jamied]

If it it was the alternator as yendor said I imagine it would still drain even if I disconnected the winch from power??

[teno45]

If it it was the alternator as yendor said I imagine it would still drain even if I disconnected the winch from power??

Correct.

Just because is a new winch doesnt mean it is 100% correct. It should be, but not always.

Try disconnecting the winch for a day or so and see how it goes.

Otherwise, if you know your way around a multimeter, just set it to amps and start looking whats drawing current!

[jamied]

ok so I havent got back to this thread for a while. I installed a kill switch and no more draining battery so its definately the winch. It works fine though. Im not too good on a multi meter so might just have to leave it as is until i have the spare dosh to get someone to look at it. Unfortunatly the patrol falls to the bottom of the priority list when it comes to cash

[threedogs]

Put a multi meter on the battery and see what it reads
,then bring up the revs to 1500 and read it again

[macca]

ok so I havent got back to this thread for a while. I installed a kill switch and no more draining battery so its definately the winch. It works fine though. Im not too good on a multi meter so might just have to leave it as is until i have the spare dosh to get someone to look at it. Unfortunatly the patrol falls to the bottom of the priority list when it comes to cash

Something has power to it when it shouldn't then This is frustrating for you. A kill switch is probably not a bad idea anyway.
Is the switch in the large cables that go direct from the battery?
I am assuming you don't have a remote switch to control the winch in the dash. If you do, where does that get its power supply from?
I think TD's comment is to test the alternator. You seem to have eliminated that as an area of issue. Don't know what the different readings would be and what they represent.... a bit more info TD please.