thatXJguy

This has got to be one of the worst parts about the Harbor Freight winch:



Has anyone found a really good way to finagle this thing?

Firehawk068

If it was mine, I would hook the large red cable directly to the battery, and take that silver looking thing and toss it in the scrap metal pile!


Seriously, what is it? What does it do?
Is it designed to cut power if it gets hot?


I have never seen a winch installed with one of those. The cables just hook directly to the battery.


I have a Q11,000 and there is nothing in the installation instructions that mentions anything about a circuit breaker...................
Works perfectly fine without one.

thatXJguy

Yeah I think it's just a surge protector.

ehall

My dad has one of those winches for his F150 to drag trees and stuff around the yard. I didn't want it hot all the time so I put some oversized brass screws and wingnuts on the battery terminal, and the winch wire is coiled up next to the battery when not in use. When he needs to winch something, he clamps it to the battery. That circuit breaker has a little 6" pigtail hanging off it, so basically it leans against the outside of the battery when he uses it, then disconnects it again when he's done.

94XjSport94

I'd wire it straight to the battery.

The absolute last thing I would want to do in my Jeep is get out and connect my winch leads when I'm stuck on a trail and need to winch. Sounds fine for a truck but about useless otherwise.

ehall

Yeah he just uses it for dragging trees around the property. 70 year old guy with a pickup

Just giving the info

thatXJguy

I've used to have this thing bolted to the battery as it is in the picture, but it's just in the way all of the time. There has to be a better way.

I recently tried getting more 4awg cable and putting the circuit breaker in between the two pieces of cable so that the wire was the only think going to the battery... but I don't have large crimps and my connector broke off yesterday while I was installing 5-90's 4awg upgrade kit.

So once again, I'm stuck with bolting that horrendous thing to the battery again, it looks like?

Dumajones

I have that thing with my Superwinch. This is how I did mine





I used one of these to get it to bolt flat.



Then wrapped it with hockey stick tape.

ehall

@OP you could get a good quality circuit breaker, something like

thatXJguy

I already have one of those in my garage, actually.

But still, that leaves a big clunky, block-like thing on top of my battery.

ehall

get a 1-foot wire and mount it on the fenderwall

thatXJguy

Currently, that's what I've BEEN doing, but my wiring connector failed yesterday while I was installing 5-90's wiring kit :P.

I don't have crimpers large enough.

XJNVA

Like a couple others have said, I'd just wire it to straight to the battery. Every vehicle we've ever put a winch on we've done it this way. No issues to date.

thatXJguy

Yeah I haven't had any issues doing that either. It's just an eye-sore and annoying when you want to add/remove things to the battery :P