Which winch?

[Sharpe]

Deffinately get everything from Del City. Welding cable from Del City is half the price and much finer stranded than battery cable from napa.

I also vote 1/0, its what I ran on Pigpen.

[Reckless]

I have a plug on the back of my truck for the same reasons your wanting John. I used brand new 2/0 , bout 40ft, from a welding shop that i got for free

[JB]

The winch I bought had a broken clutch lever that I found out after I had it already bolted down. It also kept shorting out my truck because the power terminal on the motor was touching the carrier. I exchanged it for a new one, cut down the postive terminal, got it all put back togther. I ran 1/0 cable from the battery, but just grounded the negative to a bolt for the hitch.

It is about as fast as my XD9000 but not close to as fast as the 9500XP on teh Bronco

[DRAGOONRANCH]

Do you have a good ground from the frame back to the battery?

Looks good back there though.

[JB]

Why does the ground for the winch need to go through the battery? The battery is grounded to the frame, and the winch is grounded to the frame.

[DRAGOONRANCH]

I have heard of reports of winches that were overheating since the ground wire was not big enough to carry the current back through the battery.

[Reckless]

Plus the cable that goes to the battery to the frame probably isnt big enough to handle the load either.

[Sharpe]

I have heard of reports of winches that were overheating since the ground wire was not big enough to carry the current back through the battery.

Plus the cable that goes to the battery to the frame probably isnt big enough to handle the load either.

Is there an echo?

[Reckless]

must of not caught that one

[JB]

I am running 1/0 cable from the connection at the bumper to a bolt on the frame, maybe 2-3'. How is that worse than running the cable 20' to the battery, then the battery has to ground a couple feet to the frame through a cable that is more than likely less than 1/0??? Am I confused?

[Doug Krebs]

When I talked to Warn I believe their reason is so there is a definite good connection. They are worried about corrosion, connections coming loose, etc...

[Seth]

Yes, a little. You are grounding to negative terminal, not the frame. The frame is just a common conductor of sorts. So as the winch tries to ground, it is trying to get back to the negative terminal of the battery, through the frame. So while the multiple ground straps, etc are most likely sufficient, especially on a new truck like yours, running a large guage ground direct from battery to frame assures that you will not overload any other lighter ground strap. I feel like I am being redundant, but basically just realize that you are grounding to battery, not frame.

Problems usually happen when people have rigs that are old, rusted, or could have had ground straps cut out/not reconnected/stretched from body lifts, etc. Take all that as you will.

Stereo systems that I have worked with that pushed the 100 amp range usually rana second battery with a dedicated line. Winches if I am not mistaken can exceed that pretty easily since they are very peaky consumers.

[JB]

Ok, well my front winch is grounded to a common ground on the inner fender. It has had a couple hard pulls in its day, with the only issue being that the lights will dim, but I would think that has more to do with alternator output.

WIth the 1/0 cable being close to $3 a foot, I think I am going to keep the short ground for the hitch winch, but maybe I change up the front winch ground to go straight to the optima. I am not going to mess with the factory battery to ground cable.

As for the positive side, I used a side mount extender like the one in the pic below. Front winch is on the inside, rear winch power is on the outside held on by the supplied nut. Any better way to do this?

[AggieTJ2007]

Rumor has it that optima recommends that you do not connect the winch to the side terminals,

It voids the warranty If I remember right, something about the internal connection to the side terminals not being rated for a high enough continous capacity

[JB]

So then I have hooked everything up completely wrong