Wiring winch to trailer - 3rd battery?

[Danielle]

I have a crew cab long bed that I use mostly for towing and mostly for towing my car trailer. For years I've used this super awful marine battery set up on the trailer for the winch.

I wired battery cable connectors for a customer's kei truck so he could plug his winch either in front hitch or rears and I want to do this for myself

My biggest concern is that is a long wire and sometimes dragging super resistant seized wheel vehicles up the trailer ramps and it strains even the new 18k winch

Would adding a 3rd battery on frame rear area help?

Is my concern stupid and not a real concern?

Is it ok to add a fused 25ft cable to run along whole truck and add a connector at winch? I have 0 gauge that length but not the thicker type I use to replace idi battery cables

I bought the wrong 3g alternator so I have the OEM single one (someone can't read parts descriptions!)

 

[Nero]

For voltage drop across great length of wire you'll want it to be beefy. When I wired the 7pin connector for charging the house battery in my camper I simply used 2/0 from my isolator to the connector. Probably overkill, but it works. For a winch you'll want probably a little bigger, but going from a main to booster battery, 1/0 may cost a lot to go down the frame. If you've already got it, should work perfectly. Biggest thing is make sure your grounds are beefy and very clean as well. Everyone always thinks of the hot cables but never the grounds.

 

[Overloaded-dadbod]

I mean if you want to make your investment a little less costly.
You could use a ford starter solenoid and use your ignition source to trigger your battery system to charge the battery either on your trailer or high an AGM up in the bedside. Then run a cheaper larger gauge battery cable to say a 250-400amp Anderson plug

 

[Nero]

Yep you only need a large cable from battery to load. Smaller cable for low amp charging.

 

[IDIBRONCO]

You could also wire in a battery on your trailer to the positive and negative cables on your truck. Use quick disconnects to attach the wires between the truck and trailer. You could still power the winch from the trailer battery, use smaller cables that way, and charge the trailer battery slowly. You'd probably want to use some type of breaker inline just to make sure that the trailer battery doesn't draw enough power to melt the wires. I'm talking about 4ga or 2ga wires here, not 14ga. You could even disconnect the quick couplers before winching and the reconnect them afterward to recharge the trailer battery.
Maybe I'm way off here since I'm no electrician.

 

[Clb]

I've seen big # winches kill batteries in 1 pull with the eng off.
So my thoughts here are....
Biggest pos/neg leaders to #3 deep cycle @ the winch.
Keep the alt. Running @ 13+ volts.
Ymmv

 

[franklin2]

The trailer battery setup you have now is best. I think you already know this. Reading your post, having a long run of cable and a huge winch under heavy load is not going to perform that well.

And also, the trailer battery is a separate system from your truck's battery and electrical as far as large loads. Why endanger getting home just because you want to eliminate the trailer battery?

 

[gandalf]

I would agree with Franklin2 on this. Keep things relatively simple with a known good system.

When I had my in-bed cab-over camper (Calvin said some rather interesting things about it's size), I kept a large deep cycle batter in the bed, ahead of the wheel well, to power the camper 12 volt system. There was a normal gauge charge cable from the front, normal because it carried only the charge load, not the use load. I isolated that system from the truck's main, starter, batteries with an isolater. I could run the camper power all night without affecting the starting system.

 

[u2slow]

I ran #2/0 the length of the truck, Anderson connector, and then onto the trailer which has a tongue toolbox with more batteries. That way I have full bridging ability with the trailer, or run my 4k# winch off the back of the truck.

I could further extend the #2/0 to the back of the trailer to use the winch there.

 

[Danielle]

The problem I have with some stubborn or uphill situations is the deep cycle on the trailer sometimes struggles and eventually dies. I carry a second deep cycle sometimes and have had to swap out to batteries.

That's a really good point about damaging or risking damage if truck and then I can't even get home. I can't even imagine the logistical nightmare trying to find towing for truck, trailer and car!

I like the idea of isolating that whole system so I can remove it from the equation when needed and also not risk anything trying to get home

Thanks for taking the time to reply. New risks to think about and new ideas to research.

 

[XOLATEM]

Everybody feel free to chime in on this suggestion...but, if it was me and I had a dead skid steer to drag onto a trailer...what would be wrong with bringing along a bucket of sand and/or oil-dry to throw under the tires to allow you to drag it up on the trailer ?

That was the first thing to come to mind for me, but I have done goofball stuff before...

Whatchallthink...??

 

[gandalf]

I mentioned isolating the camper battery from the 2 engine batteries, so that the camper could not draw down on the engine batteries. This is the isolator which I used.

You must be registered for see images attach

 

[Black dawg]

What are you using for a winch?
I just have a harbor freight 12k with a group 31 right next to it. Never have had any problem with not enough battery.

 

[rreegg]

The problem I have with some stubborn or uphill situations is the deep cycle on the trailer sometimes struggles and eventually dies. I carry a second deep cycle sometimes and have had to swap out to batteries.

That's a really good point about damaging or risking damage if truck and then I can't even get home. I can't even imagine the logistical nightmare trying to find towing for truck, trailer and car!

I like the idea of isolating that whole system so I can remove it from the equation when needed and also not risk anything trying to get home

Thanks for taking the time to reply. New risks to think about and new ideas to research.

Possible to rig up a solar battery maintainer?

 

[Black dawg]

Everybody feel free to chime in on this suggestion...but, if it was me and I had a dead skid steer to drag onto a trailer...what would be wrong with bringing along a bucket of sand and/or oil-dry to throw under the tires to allow you to drag it up on the trailer ?

That was the first thing to come to mind for me, but I have done goofball stuff before...

Whatchallthink...??

Sometimes whatever makes it happen is the right way.....