Leaderboard

I've only ever fitted a shutoff to prevent current draw when not in use & for security. Here in Aus we had a spate of guys unspooling people's winches, running the cable over the roof of the car to the rear bumper, engaging them and effectively crushing the roof in on someone's car while they slept.

I haven't set up a winch on a truck, but I've wondered about fusing them too. I did a little poking around and it looks like there's some debate as to the "right" way to do it. Some people just run it straight to the battery (like the starter, which isn't fused either) and call it good. It's simple, and simple is good, but it means you're gonna have a bad time if the cable rubs through or gets pinched in an accident. The risk of it shorting out can be mitigated with careful routing, but you also don't have an easy way to kill power to the winch if something goes wrong, which strikes me as sketchy. Some people run a manual shutoff switch or a relay between the cable and the battery. You can also get circuit breakers that these guys seem to like, which can be turned on and off manually but also click off if overloaded. The breaker seems like a great idea to me, provided it's properly sized so that it won't click off during normal use, and provided it can handle life in the engine bay. One commenter raised the concern of what happens if you're in a sketchy situation off-road and your breaker trips and leaves you hanging, which could be a reason to go for the basic switch over the breaker, depending on how hard your mom intends to send it. +1 for the voltmeter, that should give you a better idea of what you're up against.

You won't find a fuse for the winch power due to the high current draw of the motor under load. Much like the starter motor but winch motors pull more and much longer than starters. That is why many winch install kits have a shut off switch near the battery. It is possible there is a high amp breaker switch somewhere in the circuit. My current battery in my Pathfinder is a large(group 48?) AGM made by Deka but branded as Duracell from Sam's club. $160 with 3 year free replacement warranty was hard to beat for an AGM that seems to get good reviews from the boating world. I added a voltmeter many years ago to my truck and have observed voltages running everywhere from 13v to almost 16 with it and I know the alternator charging control is completely in the built in regulator in the alternator. My alternator is from a late 90s Quest, so has twice the current output than the stock unit my truck had. I did up size the charging cable when I observed the original smoking while I was jump starting a truck shortly after the alternator upgrade, but other than that, basically stock and has been working fine for more than 15 years.