Wiring for a front winch

[Bad1975]

Good info, thanks. Tell us about your winch. Have you used it much? How does it perform under load? Do you have a fuse at the battery? If so what size? Wire size you ran to the front?

1/0 wire, 300 AMP little fuse and 500 AMP winch solenoid disconnect ran to in cab switch to turn power on to the winch..

Warn EVO 8S max current draw of 298 Amps according to Warn. Ran it up a 15% incline to properly spool the rope but otherwise haven’t needed it yet. Checked for heat in the wiring and winch and there was nothing that could be felt to the touch after the long constant pull.

I went with smaller winch for weight and reduced amp draw and will use two snatch blocks depending upon the situation to get up to 24,000lbs. Pulling power while only putting 8k on the winch and 16k on the bumper if absolutely necessary.

 

[ultane]

Dang it! I hate you @ultane! Now I'm REALLY stressing about it.

Fortunately (or unfortunately), I'm probably not going to be in a position where I'll actually need to use the winch in the very near future. However, I'll probably look at running the wire next month. My financial budget as well as my wife-ok-with-me-working-on-the-truck-instead-of-spending-time-with-her budget is nearly maxed out for June.

Well over a decade ago, Subarus were known for blown head gaskets between 70,000 miles and 100,000 miles. It was accepted, and considered part of the cost of ownership.

Over a two year period, they finally figured things out. Changed the antifreeze chemistry, changed the head gaskets material, and did a better job of grounding the engine to prevent weird currents through the engine block (or something to that effect). Since 2010, the boxer engine head gaskets have been incredibly reliable.

 

[EOD Guy]

There are many, many "gang" grounding splices/connectors located throughout the electrical system on the LC and the Neg cable for the 12v battery is attached to the body. IMO you'll be fine without running a separate Neg cable as electrons actually flow from the neg side to the Pos side (to the layman that means "huh").

 

[Quest4vertical]

1/0 wire, 300 AMP little fuse and 500 AMP winch solenoid disconnect ran to in cab switch to turn power on to the winch..

Warn EVO 8S max current draw of 298 Amps according to Warn. Ran it up a 15% incline to properly spool the rope but otherwise haven’t needed it yet. Checked for heat in the wiring and winch and there was nothing that could be felt to the touch after the long constant pull.

I went with smaller winch for weight and reduced amp draw and will use two snatch blocks depending upon the situation to get up to 24,000lbs. Pulling power while only putting 8k on the winch and 16k on the bumper if absolutely necessary.

Thanks for this. So many people are running 1/0 with no issues, however, the math doesn't really work, not sure which way to go. I really want to run the 1/0 for many reasons. Interesting you went smaller winch, I was thinking larger winch [12k] because it would not work as hard and draw less amps as a result. I am not experienced with the whole snatch block thing, but that seems interesting, guess I'm googling that.

 

[Bad1975]

Sorry for long post by here is my reasoning on the 1/0 for my install.

The math works out to around 298-360ish seconds (~5 minutes or more) at max current draw for the 1/0 I bought with 105C insulation and an ambient temp of 40C (fudge factor for the portion running through the side of the engine bay) to cause the insulation to go from 40C to 105C and to begin to melt. I bought Marine grade 1/0 TPE insulation(oil/water/gas/acid resistant) 1064 strands can handle 285 Amps constant load outside engine bay and 242 Amps constant load in the engine bay before the insulation begins to have issues. I will be swapping my fuse to a 225 Amp before hitting the trail so the fuse will blow before the wire catches fire!

The only time you would see current that high would be on the last few wraps on the drum on a heavily stuck vehicle, you should never put much load on a winch on the last few wraps. If you need to then you need to re-rig.

With the snatch blocks I'll never come close to that at and the math at half the current is somewhere around 15-20 minutes IIRC. All of the math is assuming constant continuous load which doesn't happen often if your doing a safe recovery.

My initial rope tensioning pull to properly spool it onto the drum will likely be the worst I ever see since it was without snatch blocks pulling vehicle weight up the 15% grade with light brakes applied and was a constant and continuous load from last 8 wraps to fully loaded on the drum and that didn't cause any heat I could feel, that was ~8k load or the winches limit and was done that way to test and proof the install.

I've only had to use a winch once in 32 years, but if it wasn't available the day/days to walk out and recover my truck later would have really sucked. I do allot of offroading solo so its more of an insurance policy for me and I will likely never need to use it for recovery. Traction boards and a shovel are first even with a winch for me, often times its quicker and allot safer.