winch relay or use starter relay for winch

[dgorsett]

On my winch equipped vehicles I have put a wing nut on the accessory terminal stud and leave the power disconnected until I need it, failsafe.

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[Bikeric]

One day while wheeling in my Land Rover Discovery I got stuck bad in some snow. I hooked the winch to a tree and started winching. At one point while after I had disconnected I was spooling in the winch to reset. When I let go of the "In" button the winch continued to spool in. I disconnected the controller and it was still spooling in. There was roughly 30' before it got to the fairlead. I started to panic thinking it was going to get to the fairlead and start destroying stuff. I had no tools at hand. The only thing I could think of was disconnecting it from the battery but no tools. I then remembered I had a old crappy Leatherman in my console. Popped the hood and started removing the ground cable with winch connection. It was close, I had roughly 3' of line before the hook was to the fairlead. The winch contactor failed closed while spooling in. I now run a disconnect for this very reason.

Just curious if you could have released the clutch in that situation?
Personally, I just wire the winches directly to the battery. My opinion against using the Aux Switch to activate a winch relay is that the vehicle must be "ON" (which it probably would be), but there is always the off chance something else has gone wrong as well.
Now I'm thinking about velcroing a wrench in the engine compartment in case I need to quickly remove a battery cable......

 

[orion]

Just curious if you could have released the clutch in that situation?
Personally, I just wire the winches directly to the battery. My opinion against using the Aux Switch to activate a winch relay is that the vehicle must be "ON" (which it probably would be), but there is always the off chance something else has gone wrong as well.
Now I'm thinking about velcroing a wrench in the engine compartment in case I need to quickly remove a battery cable......

With it turning it wouldn’t allow me to. It was one of those good worm gear driven winches from super winch. Maybe the planetary style winches would allow it. Good idea on the wrench or like the poster above, a wing nut!

 

[Bodge Garage]

This is how I have opted to deal with a fail safe, manual disconnect. Dead reliable and my jumper cables plug into the same connector.

 

[Mlarv]

This is how I have opted to deal with a fail safe, manual disconnect. Dead reliable and my jumper cables plug into the same connector.

This is how I wired mine up to my truck. I also have a set of 30 foot jumper cables I can plug in and help someone if needed.

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