A Proper Winch

So I have had a truck, a trailer and winch for a couple of years now and never really got around to getting all three working at the same time. I did occasionally grab a spare battery and throw it on the trailer, but usually the battery was dead well before the car was on the trailer. Zero Gauge wire and permanent installation was just gonna be too much $$.

So I present, A winch install and the fabrication of 2 ramps for 70 bucks.

Bed Install : Note that the chains also double as F250 bling

Here is the package I created: Spare battery clamps, to an industrial 3 prong socket, to the extension cord, to an industrial 3 prong plug to the winch.

Power: plug is rated for 20A at 110Volts, so figure that's good for ??A at 10-12 Volts

Going to the Bed, nothing more than an 12 foot cord; wanna go to the trailer, grab something longer from the garage

Single person loading and unloading, $40 ramp kit and 16 bucks for some serious 2x8x12's (cut to fit the bed, ignored the mfg's instructions on "proper" length"

I just don't know why I am so proud of this.

Umm.. not sure what kind of winch you have from the pics but..

You might want to put a heavier power wire on that thing.

My Warn 8274 is a "proper" 8000lb winch run by a big starter motor which will heat up welding cable quite nicely on a long pull.

200 amps at 12 volts requires a LOT more than a household plug.

Shawn

It is basically the smallest warn out there, think ATV's. I just use it to pull stuff into the bed and pull rollers on to the dovetail trailer. This thing would pull my f250 about 0.000001 inches on snot covered concrete.

Thing is with electricity it's all in the Amps for what wire gauge you use, not in the Watts. That's why they use transformers and high voltage, so they can keep the amperage down enough to use smaller (cheaper) wire.

The voltage drop that cord is going to get you will make the winch hardly work at all under load, and if it does the cord will get dangerously hot.

You are also going to get some serious loading on the sides of the bed on the truck, pulling towards center, with the chain like that. The math is a pain but the short answer is that the easiest way to turn a small amount of force into a lot is with a strong cable and by deflecting it.

I use a HF jump start box on my HF winch. Always works.

I based it on the design below which i watched pull a very stubborn vehicle onto a trailer. All my wire gauges are larger than Mlock uses. The smallest extension cord I will buy is 12 gauge (the example is a 10) Of course a zero gauge install is a better idea; this is just my fast work around for not pushing; or spending my life ratching a come-long. There is a doubler on there if I need a torque multiplier. If those hooks get pulled out of the frame, then something really dramatic happened and replacing them is no longer my biggest problem.

As for the power calculation, I just winged it. VI=P, P is the only thing that can be converted to heat. Grab v=ir; and use bigger wire for lower r. So if I was going to really do the math I would need to know the max motor draw before stalling and pull out the old HP... but then I couldn't find my thermo book, so I just figured if it got too hot I wouldn't use it.

Small winch, biggish wires; buyer beware :) If I had a real winch, I would have to really wire it.

jamscal wrote: I use a HF jump start box on my HF winch. Always works.

I always forgot to charge my jump box/spare battery

A propper wench hasent existed since the dark ages Oh you wrote winch I gotta read more carefully.

Timeormoney said: Power: plug is rated for 20A at 110Volts, so figure that's good for 200A at 10-12 Volts

wow dude... you really need to read like "electricity 101" or something... your thinking is absolutely backwards. As volts decrease, the amperage required to produce the same wattage goes up. The higher the amperage, the thicker the cable. With that extension cord, you've probably got something like 16, maybe 14 gauge conductors, if youre lucky. My ATV winch has a run of about 4 feet and it came with 8 gauge wire. If I wanted to make an 8 foot run I'd probably have to step it down to 4 gauge. I think you have seriously underestimated the powerdraw of your winch and the ability of that wire to handle that draw.

Please fix it before you catch things on fire...k?

andrave wrote:

Timeormoney said: Power: plug is rated for 20A at 110Volts, so figure that's good for 200A at 10-12 Volts

wow dude... you really need to read like "electricity 101"

You are quite correct, It ain't perfect, vi=p, v=ir therefore p=i^2R (this is the equation driving the heat, and therefore gauge requirements based on the resistance (r) of a given length of stranded coper or aluminum wire and went way over my willingness to research and would also require me to do an evaluation of the amp draw of the motor). So I let mlock do the research; and just used what I think are bigger wires than they did, since both winches have similar ratings. Overall voltage drop isn't a big concern for me, as this system requires a self limiter based on the user (mlock's does that electronically through an overheat switch).

I did however pull the Amp estimate from my post as it made some silly assumptions as you pointed out.

Hmmm, the actual amperage draw of the winch will be proportional to the load it's pulling. Every wire heats up some when current flows through it. If your rig can deliver enough current to the winch to do it's job and pull the loads you want, and it finishes the job before the wire heats up enough to melt the insulation, then 'buddy, she's done'. Just don't ask it to do more than that.

Carter