Dead battery - winch shorted I think

Flatten a charged battery in 5 seconds?
I'd like to see that!
Unless it was a 7Ah gel cell, you would have another story to tell!!!
Cheers

No it was an Exide 4x4 battery I recall. It could have been less than 5 seconds.

The winch cable had rubbed through on the body causing a short. At that precise moment I was attempting to ford a muddy gutter which was deeper than I had anticipated. The bullbar went into the mud embankment, we came to a sudden stop and the cable did its thing. When I attempted to restart there was no battery power whatsoever.

My mate winched me out and after taping up the cable I restarted the truck in reverse. The battery charged again normally after that.

This happened in the remote Fitzmaurice River region in the NT in 1992.

Cheers

Hi,

Well, Willem, I would think the battery was either faulty or not charged. If you short out a fully charged battery, you will get fireworks big time, believe me....
Cheers

hl

There were lots of sparks.

It sounds like you don't believe me but that is your prerogative.

I also see that I did not write about the sparks either in my story. Go to my website below, click on 4x4 and then click on BACK UP! ON PALM CREEK story.

This was also published in 4x4 Australia Mag in 1992

Cheers

G'day Willie,

I used to have one of those switches with the big red plastic key, mounted beside the starter battery, so I could cut power to the winch. I'm not sure what they're rated at but I went to use the winch on one occasion and it wouldn't work at all. I was stuck and needed the bloody thing to cease being an ornament!!! In frustration, I by-passed the switch and the winch fired up no worries and I was able to extricate myself from my predicament. No more switch!!!

However, I only had it fitted cos of the stories I'd heard about @rseholes shorting the winch box out after having dragged the cable over the roof and attaching hook onto towbar. I'd never thought of the possibility of a complete short in the winch or cables.

Cheers

Roachie

Hi Willie...

It's not that I don't believe you, but the amount of energy stored in a fully charged battery (in good condition) is enough to make really bad things happen. You could not discharge it fully within seconds with no more than just a few decent sparks. In most cases they will just burn through the short and hopefully all will be well after that. However, if the cable is heavy enough and the short is solid, the battery will rapidly start boiling and possibly explode. So, I treat these things with great respect. Fusible links right at the battery are absolutely essential in my view.

Cheers

G'day Bill

Yep, I had the same switch lying around here for a while until me mate reminded me of the incident. The winch works OK but I must admit I haven't tried it under load. Will go and do so this morning and report back later. If it fails I will re route the terminals. No big deal....LOL

Hi hl

The vehicle was a 1979 Busted Arse bush Landcruiser FJ55.

What happened, happened and that is all I can say. One can speculate on the semantics of all things electrical but when it comes down to the crunch, that is what happened.

Cheers

Hi Willem,

Intersting to finally put a face to your name. In my mind you were a lot older :-))

Some interesting stuff on your site, must be good to be able to trace your roots that far back. Unfortunately for those of us from mongrel background, we will never know where we came from.

Bill

I hooked the GQ winch up to the back fence post which is a piece of railway track concreted a metre into the ground.

Applied handbrake and the Brawn dragged the rear wheels. Then apllied foot brake and she still kept on winching. Then the fence post came towards me and I had to stop. Took best part of 10 minutes to straighten the whole shebang up again. So my switch must be a good 'un as it did not show any sign of fading. It was a straight line pull of around 25 metres.

Conman

Yeah thanks for the compliment. Sometimes I feel a lot older...lol
Plenty of skeletons in the cupboard mate. The rest of my family were not overly imprseed with my research..hahahahaha

Cheers