Outer Limits 4x4 Board

Ive got an old style high mount winch that i am going to set up in my zook soon, and wanted to clear up some questions that i have. Also, will be getting the alternator rewound to 100+ amps.

The winch comes with 2ga cable on it, and can suposedly draw quite a lot of current, something around 400 amps at full load. From what i can find on the net, jaycar says that their 2ga is good to about 160amps. Where should i be looking at cable to carry the load that the winch can apply?

Looking at dual battery systems, i would like to run 2 optima red tops to supply the winch, lights, motor, etc. I look at the solinoids that some people use and find that they are rated at 80 - 100amps, again not very useful with the winch current. Or are these systems based towards flattening the battery that the winch uses, whilst keeping the car running off the other battery, to allow the system to recover?

Any help would be great

Cheers

Current rating on cables is the continuous current the cable can carry under nominal conditions without going into melt-down. For your application some things work in your favour.

Your winch won't draw full current all the time.
You won't be drawing current indefinitely.
You will probably have air flow over sections of the cable.

Unless you intend to be winching for hours at a time, 2ga will probably be OK - it'll continue to get hotter during the winch operation, but it's unlikely to reach a critical temperature before your batteries go flat.

The real critical factor for a winch is cable resistance - at high currents the resistance of the cable becomes quite significant, so you lose too much voltage over the cable and don't end up with enough at the winch.
Make sure all your terminations are good quality low-resistance joints. Joints are normally the killer for voltage losses.

Cheers,

Scott

So im looking for some nice low resistance 2ga for the winch power cable.

Anyone got info on the dual battery setup? or should i just wire them together?

Cheers
Richard