Winch Relays ( Soleniods ) WARN Himonnt

[RRturboD]

I am just about to fit my first winch, so the discussion above has been very useful. I am interested.

[80UTE]

Got the new control box up and running and works a real treat with 400 amp continious on the in circuit should have heaps of capacity. Winch sounds heaps more energetic when i tried it out last week up the bush its getting far less voltage drop at the relays 50mm CSA copper/tin coated buss bars conecting the relays and have all new 50mm CSA cables with crimped and soldered ends. Will try and attach photo.Wally

http://s108.photobucket.com/albums/n17/ ... h=imgAnch1

[hottiemonster]

that looks awesome wally!

[stephen]

Corrosion



It cracked around the positive post, maybe overtightend



I installed the new one behind the headlight.

[beretta]

Hmm something wasn't right with that. I've dropped one of these solenoids from about 5 feet straight onto concrete and it didn't affect it at all, apart from mark the casing badly and it's still working sweet as!

By the way for those who were interested I now have these solenoids for sale , they are proving very popular which is awesome! The ones I have now are a new version and have screw in terminals for the coil rather than the spade terminals, which is obviously better for contact and makes them less prone to failure should the terminal come loose as it can with the spade terminals.

I am selling these at $195 each, PM me if you are interested.

[David_S]

Got the new control box up and running and works a real treat with 400 amp continious on the in circuit should have heaps of capacity.
Wally

Your 6-pack looks like a great idea, Wally. The advantage I can see is that it halves the load on each IN relay (which is a very valid reason) and provides redundancy (another valid reason) but not that it will reduce arcing at the contacts as the relays, being electromechanical, will not open at precisely the same instant thus one relay of a pair will arc as much as before. But your silver contacts should reduce pitting due to arcing.

The Warn solenoids are not as bad as people make out. For a long time I had my solenoid pack mounted on the motor and it got dunked a number of times but it is only now showing signs of problems (intermittent sticking) after I finally got round to relocating it under the bonnet. Some of those Warn solenoids have been there for well over 10 years - I think 2 have been there for 20!

David

[Coighty]

David the reason yours has lasted so long is because its the old style solenoid, warn have changed them recently to crap ones, mine didn't last 4 mths. Happy to say thou i got one from berretta's first 2, which has been on for about 6 weeks now and these are awsum, and easy to wire.

[Shadow]

John thanks for the reply. The reason I was curious/confused was as a friend of mine asked these solenoids are only rated at 100amps continuous, but a winch pull heaps more than that sometimes, so how do they handle it?

I haven't had to do a heavy pull with mine yet. I don't know what the current rating is, but they are very popular with the winch challenge competitors in the UK.

Typically, a continuous rating is literally continuous - 24/7. I guess a mintue or two of winching at 3 or 4 times the continuous rating is something they can handle.

Cheers,

Scott

not so

A continuous rating is application specific. A MOSFet contiuous rating is specified as 5 minutes(varies according to manufacturer, but most are about 5minutes). Im thinking these solenoid packs use mosfet's in them so that would be a good estimate.

These solenoid packs would not be all that hard to build. They are probably just a half-bridge configuration of really fat mosfets with applicable drive circuit and protection components. Mosfets rated at 70 amps are about $10 ina to220 pack, not sure what the bigger packaged ones go for, but you could probably get a 200amp for about $40. Need 2 of them, a drive IC ($5), youd need to do a little PCB, alu watertight enclosure (act as heatsink aswell) and then your done. would be a nice little project to do.

[David_S]

David the reason yours has lasted so long is because its the old style solenoid, warn have changed them recently to crap ones, mine didn't last 4 mths. :

Now why would Warn do such a silly thing? Sounds a bit like the guys at Winchester back in the 60s who under new management decided to "improve" their famous rifles (Model 70) with plastic and other lightweight gimmicks and then wondered why their previously loyal customers deserted them.

David

[ausoops]

what size cable do most people use to run their winches? my mate got an old toyota factory 10k lb lowmount and wanted to hook it up. we went to tjm and they use 50mm single insulated which i thought was a little small for the current involved plus the idea of single insulation rubbing through to the chassis, we went and got some 70mm double insulated, also does anyone use fuses for the connection from the batteries?

[Drafty]

Corrosion



It cracked around the positive post, maybe overtightend


I installed the new one behind the headlight.

Have seen the same thing happen aswell to 2 of them.

[David_S]

I have started a new post asking for feedback on these contactors under working conditions.

http://carl.outerlimits4x4.com/viewtopic.php?t=91869

Would appreciate any comments - David