Sunday, Jan 04, 2015 at 15:37
Shannon,
There are four ways of doing this as I see it.
1 A simple, manually operated isloator which you use to connect the batteries in parallel when you want to winch.
2 A setup where you would have a "dumb"solenoid (ie, not a smart isolator/VSR device). In this case the two poles of the isolator will each have 12 volts on them all the time, one from each battery. You will need a manual switch to operate the solenoid whenever you want to winch.
3 Use a conventional Redarc type 200 amp isolator. It would work conventionally, ie after starting your car the main battery voltage comes up, activates the isolator and connects the two in parallel until you switch the engine off. BUT THERE IS A POSSIBLE PROBLEM HERE. When winching, even though the batteries are in parallel and the engine running, the 200 or so amps coming out of main battery may pull its voltage down far enough for the isolator to drop out, leaving you winching off just the crank battery. You would need to install an over-ride switch to correct that. No gain there compared to option 2, in fact you'll be out of pocket. 200Amp dumb solenoid about $50. 200 amp Redarc $380 rrp.
4 You could place sensor wires on the winch-out and winch-in terminals of the winch motor, feeding back to the solenoid of your choice. Each sensor wire would have to have a diode in it so that when voltage was applied to one, there was no
feedback from the common point at the solenoid to the other winch terminal. Thus, whenever you operated the winch, either winching in or winching out, one of the sensor wires would have a voltage applied to it. That would tell the solenoid the parallel up the batteries. When you stop winching the solenoid would disconnect (dumb solenoid) or revert to "smart" behaviour (Redarc type)
Cheers
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