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Posted by Sherman in Idaho [24.32.202.166] on Saturday, January 26, 2013 at 20:13:15 :
In Reply to: Electric winch question posted by Bruce in BC [24.207.111.24] on Saturday, January 26, 2013 at 19:05:04 :
I would not hesitate to use the FRAME as the ground conductor from the winch to the battery, if the battery were also grounded to the FRAME. Problems come with relying on the ground strap between the block and frame to carry a lot of current. Lots of times the engine ground strap is missing, and then you have a situation where you might be asking the motor mounts, exhaust hangers, throttle linkage, choke cable, or drive lines to carry hundreds of amps of current, which they won't be happy doing.
I'm sure the statement in the Warn book was just CYA, because they have no way of knowing what funky convoluted ground path might result if someone just grounded the winch to the nearest piece of metal. My thinking it a short cable to the frame at each end, provided the connection is good, is going to result in lower resistance overall, and a neater installation, than a longer copper wire. On the other hand, if you use the frame you're introducing two points where corrosion could cause a poor connection. I would sand the frame well at the contact, put a star washer between the cable lug and the frame, and maybe dope the whole thing up with that anti-corrosion grease they use on aluminum cables in power installations. My preference would depend on where the battery is located as well. If the battery is in the engine compartment, it be easy enough to run a single wire. If it's under the passenger seat or under the bed, the frame is looking better.
Another thing I've seen done quite a bit is mount a separate battery for the winch. You can mount it close to the winch, so the heavy cables can be short, and you can connect it to the main battery either with a relatively light wire or with a battery isolator so that it gets charged at the same time as the main battery. One advantage of that, depending on how you set it up, is that if you run the winch battery all the way down by winching, the main battery will still start the engine. The hillbilly method is to put the winch battery in a box on the front bumper, but a clever guy could figure out something neater.
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