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Re: Re: Winch Battery on trailer.... Charge?
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Posted by Mike on April 23, 1999 at 03:39:06:
In Reply to: Re: Winch Battery on trailer.... Charge? posted by Jerry on April 22, 1999 at 19:02:27:
Personal opinion ?
Definitly go with a battery isolator ! They're only about $30 int the "big city" (where everything seems to cost more) and you'll end up with a couple of benefits . The first is that you can protect your vehicle system better by fusing the second battery line in case of shorts (yeah, I know, you can do that without the isolator but if the line shorts out when you are not running the vehicle it could kill the battery between the time you park the rig for the night and the next morning). With the isolator, if the line shorts out, it's only going to draw power when the alternator is supplying it (which brings us to the second benefit).
Second, you can taylor the power to what the battery wants (most deep discharge batteries don't like more than 20 amps even when dead, give em more and the plates can warp). If you want to limit the power (number of amps) the battery can get at worst case (dead), place a large wattage light bulb in series with that circuit. If the worst happens and the line shorts out, the light will light up to full power (based on your using a 12 volt light) and it will stay at full power until you turn off the engine or clear the short. If the battery is stone cold dead, the light will come up to full power until the battery voltage comes up.
A third benefit (with the light bulb as a current limiter) would be if you have the truck running and have run the trailer battery dead (or nearly so), if you try to load that last tractor or whatever and the trailer battery just doesn't have the juice to pull the load, you won't fry your vehicles alternator by running the winch off of it, but the lightbulb will come up to full power till you figure out to take your finger off of the up button. Why a light bulb?
They're dumb! (they don't care about polarity)
They're cheap! (you can get them almost anywhere)
They're rugged! (they're designed to bounce around when you drive your truck into the field) I have this type of setup on my personal truck with some additional parts because I occasionally need 24 volts to crank an industrial "Starting engine" (which crankes an even larger engine !). The company people are still trying to figure out how I get 24 volts out of of a 12 volt system and how I can charge it from a 12 volt vehicle system !).
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