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Originally Posted by jdm-v35
Thanks for the detailed info. I didn't think about it but one of those circuit breakers would be a good dual purpose fix for swtched power as well as safety while it is on. I use them in my dual battery setup but did not think they were needed on a winch, and not sure if that load rating is high enough. Can't winches pull up to 400A? I would just need to fab up a mount for the breaker.
I got the winch installed yesterday and just need to get the power connected.
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Your probably right on amps. For some reason I thought 10klb class winches draw less than they claim. I don't remember why I was thinking that. But maybe I'm totally wrong and my fuse set is higher than I remember. I know my warn 8274 will pull a lot more amps than my super winch 9500. It'll kill a battery fast!
I've never blown my fuses. Most winches come with a fuse set in the box, but not all do. Obviously they size the fuse to roughly match the winch draw. The main goal is to stop a fire if the wire short circuits. So the fuse needs to be low enough to burn through with a direct short and high enough not to blow during normal use. Your winch probably has a spec sheet available that'll tell you the minimum amperage you'll need.
Circuit breakers come in a lot of sizes. I think you'll find them up to 400 amps of you look. I know I have a 300 amp on my camper system.
The only down side there is that I'm not sure how many cycles they're good for. The switch on a circuit breaker isn't made for thousands of on/of toggles. But how often will you turn it on and off? I probably use my winch 20 times a year or less. So it'd be fine I think. But I just use a fuse on mine.
You can also use fuses or circuit breakers in parallel to increase capacity. So if you find 50 or 100 amp fuses readily available, you can combine 2 x100 amp fuses for a 200 amp circuit. That's actually how mine is because it's what was included in the box with the winch. But it's worked well for 6 years so far.
Edit: I went and looked at the manual. I was wrong. My winch came with a set of I think 4 x 100 amp auto-recloser circuit breakers that I have always assumed were just fuses. They're mounted in parallel on a set of buss bars into a single package. I never paid much attention to what was really there. Haha. They look like one time use fuses. I learned something new!