Dan91

Hey guys, I've been wanting to setup for a rear winch for a while and today I ran the cables to the rear cargo area. I was gonna go with 2/0 but Home Depot only had 4/0! So after much bending the wire snaking it around to fit nicely I've got them in place! I don't think I'll ever have a lack of power in the rear now! So, to those that've done this, what size wire did you use?

Jeepzjlover

Did they have a red wire for positive and how much did that wire cost, how long is it, and how flexible is it I need to do this myself?

mr white

What kind of load current does your winch pull?
https://www.eol.ucar.edu/rtf/facilit.../Wire_Size.htm
If you don't have one already, get an inline fuse and throw that on the hot wire. Look at the chart I posted and put a fuse in there that is a little less than the max rating of the wire unless you want a fire.
And did you really run a ground wire all the way back from your battery? :facepalm:

Dan91

This is service entrance cable, the same stuff houses are wired with from the electric company feed into your main panel. It isn't the ideal wire to use, aluminum 4/0 is very hard to bend, but I used it because it was cheap (like 1.89/foot for three lines (I discarded the 2/0 ground). Some people say welding wire is best, as it is very easy to bend but that's $6-7 dollars a foot, (double that since I ran a dedicated ground.) If your Jeep is rusty you should definitely run a dedicated ground. Rusty steel doesn't like to conduct well, and I wanted a good strong power feed to the back.

P.S. The positive wire is not marked red, in a residential wiring application it is supposed to be black. But hey, a few inches of red electrical tape and you're good to go.

P.P.S. I'm still trying to work out how to fuse this sucker. Short of custom making an ANL fuse holder that can take these large wires I'm not sure what I can do.

razor02097

Check some car audio shops... they should be able to help you with the fuse holder. As far as wiring... looks like you got it figured out.

One thing about the ground though... It is usually better to just ground to the frame as close to the device as possible. Sand or grind the surface to bare metal and attach with a bolt, screw or other conductive fastener then spray with protective coating. It saves money, time and protects against radio interference.... Well I guess a winch wouldn't care about radio interference...

Jeepzjlover

If this is true about grounding to the frame why do the winch wiring kits always come with hot and ground wires? I'm running a multimount on mine so I'm not sure how this would work?

razor02097

Probably because they know people won't ground the winch correctly. IMO running a ground wire from front to back is a waste of money. I would run a ground cable from winch to frame and a cable from frame to battery. The frame is plenty big enough to handle that current.

When I relocated the battery to the trunk in my Z28 I went through this sort of thing. I've seen people run all sort of goofy setups. From running new grounds to running a full length cable to the factory ground location. All I did was run the ground to the sub frame and ground the factory ground strap to the frame. Works great and charges the battery perfectly.


For the multimount it wouldn't be any different. You would have 2 cables to the connector. The ground would be grounded to the frame instead of following the cable to the battery. It probably wouldn't matter but for the guy shelling out cash to build his own wiring kit he could save quite a bit of money buying a few feet of ground cable Vs. running it the full length to the front.

jcwclm

I used 2/0

notop46

I did mine winch wiru-ing the same way with 2/0 batery cable pulled from a Trans Am that had the batery mounted in the trunk. For my Chevelle, I did a dual battery trunk mount the same way with a marine selector switch between the batteries and the pos. cable.

mr white

His truck is rusty as **** I guess. In which case it would make sense to run the ground all the way back.

razor02097

All I can say is if the vehicle is that rotted out I hope he doesn't pull it apart with that winch...