wiring up a winch

junglejim · Oct 20, 2013

Got a electric winch and want to wire it to tractor which is a positive ground. Do I hook the positive of the winch to the negative battery terminal? Thanks

Daver1963 · Oct 20, 2013

I don't have much experience with positive ground systems, but if you have a multimeter check the voltage first and see where you're getting positive voltage.

chopped · Oct 20, 2013

Interesting question.
I found this.
How to Run a Positive Ground From Your Car Battery to a Winch | eHow
But id think either way you wired it it should work. The in might be the out and vice versa but thats my take on it.

crazyal · Oct 20, 2013

Positive should always connect to positive. In your case either to the positive terminal of the battery or to the metal frame of the tractor. What you'll want to do is put any relays and/ or fuses on the negative wire near the battery.

GPintheMitten · Oct 20, 2013

A winch motor will turn in both directions. When you swirch polarity it turns in yhe opposite direction.

To demonstrate this to yourself, hook up a set of jumper cables to the winch note how it turns and then switch the cables and you will see it reverse.

That's thr reason winches have either relays or solenoids. They allow you to use a small switch to energize the solenoids differently so thst it changes the polarity.

In otherwords it shouldn't matter about positive ground. It only changes the in out.

GPintheMitten · Oct 21, 2013

I need to stand corrected. My winch motor is permanent magnet and therefore it switches direction with polarity change. Not all winch motors are permanent magnet and therefore all don't behave the way I stated. Thanks to K7LN for his help via PM's to help me understand.

To the OP, let us know how you work it out. I'm sure it will be helpful to a number of people with positive ground tractors.

junglejim · Oct 27, 2013

:thumbsup: Everything is working fine with winch no smoke . The charging system is to small to keep up with the electric draw of the winch . Good reason to take a rest . Thanks

GPintheMitten · Oct 28, 2013

So how did you hook it up?

junglejim said:
:thumbsup: Everything is working fine with winch no smoke . The charging system is to small to keep up with the electric draw of the winch . Good reason to take a rest . Thanks

oosik · Oct 28, 2013

Your electric winch -depending upon size - will draw anywhere from 500 - 800 amps at full pull. There are few, if any, charging systems on any type vehicle that can keep up with this draw on a battery. A really strong system will allow 10%-15% operational time. That means 10% of the time pulling/running and 90% of the time recharging the battery. Many folks run double batteries to increase the pull/run time.

Be very careful with a winch system. It is quite easy to overuse and boil off a battery. The discharge/recharge cycles are so heavy the fluid in the battery becomes hot and will actually boil off. I have seen a few time where a battery will get so hot it explodes.

junglejim · Oct 28, 2013

Put pos to pos and neg to neg The book said if the switch worked backwards to hook it to battery the other way. If all else fails you can read the book .