Go BottomWinch drains Mule battery
 | John in Colorado
Join Date: Posts: 1 
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2003-03-18 51431
Has anyone out there experience with using a winch on a Mule. I installed a Ramsey 3000 on my new Mule 3010 diesel and after several hard pulls the battery was drained. The diesel is supposed to have a 40 amp alternator, but I'm starting to wonder.... Any input is appreciated.
John
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| TomG
Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 5406 Upper Ottawa Valley 
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2003-03-19 51447
I don't know the particular winch but I believe with most you don't expect an alternator to be able to power a winch. I seem to recall typical max power draws over 100A.
There's been discussion here about using several batteries and maybe deep discharge types.
....
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 | Art White
Join Date: Jan 2000 Posts: 6898 Waterville New York
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2003-03-19 51448
Thats a big alternator for the size of the Mule but you are not alone in the battery problem and winching. ....
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| John in Colorado
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2003-03-19 51493
I had thought about replacing the stock battery with the highest amp-hour battery which fits in the compartment. I was really surprised how quickly the winch drained the battery, but if other people have experienced this, then maybe my system is not defective. The Ramsey winches are supposed to be the most efficient available.
John ....
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| TomG
Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 5406 Upper Ottawa Valley
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2003-03-20 51502
I'd figure things along these lines. A 75AH battery that's standard for many compacts will support a 75A load for an hour and then rapidly decline. That's likely less than a half-hour for many winches at max loads.
The regulator should protect the alternator when the battery goes flat, but such operation would ruin standard batteries before long.
I'd check the max load spec of the winch and just realize that a battery isn't going to support much continuous heavy work. I've never known enough about deep discharge batteries to know why they aren't recommended for vehicles. Possibly they don't produce enough cold-cranking amps.
....
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| Art White
Join Date: Jan 2000 Posts: 6898 Waterville New York
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2003-03-20 51510
Tom, the deep cycle batteries, for what I know are not meant to be recharged the same as a normal auto battery. So it would be good for the winch to pull more for longer but not good for the charging system. ....
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 | Murf
Join Date: Dec 1999 Posts: 7249 Toronto Area, Ontario, Canada
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2003-03-20 51511
It may not be very convenient, or what you're looking for, but years ago we made a self-contained portable winch for use around the farm, cottage, hunt camp, etc.
It is a deeply reduced chain-driven winch, a very old, small version of what you might find as a PTO driven winch on a wrecker, we mounted it on a small peice of 1/2" plate and cut a 3" hole at the back end of the plate, this hole is big enough to take a trailer hitch, clevis, or even chain easily. It is driven with a large chainsaw engine running first through a gearbox which is about a 15:1 reducer. You hook it to something immoveable, and something that just doesn't want to move, set it to half throttle and it does the work. It's not pretty, it's loud, and it weighs about 50 lbs., but it will nearly pull a good-sized tree over before it stalls out and stops pulling.
I've also seen people use small gear-reduced starter motors (like off a small diesel engine) to drive a large boat-trailer type winch, after manually taking up the slack by hand then disengaging the handle and using the starter for a short period, this way you limit the amount of time the motor runs for, thus limiting the current draw.
Best of luck. ....
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 | Peters
Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 3034 Northern AL
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2003-03-20 51533
The electric winches will affect a 100A system and people using them constantly on a pickup will double the batteries.
On a normal lead acid battery the (cold crank amps)CCA of a battery are dictated by the area of the plates in each cell. A deep discharge battery normally has thicker plates to deminish the effects of the deep discharge. It also has deeper mud sills etc. but this is not critical for the discussion. If the battery is a fixed size then the CCA and the deep discharge are conflicting.
The same can be said for gell batteries, but they are better at deep discharge.
The rolled batteries batteries have very large plates and good deep discharge due to the high pressure on the plates.
battery comparison www.vonwentzel.net/Battery/01.Type/ ....
Link: Rolled Bat
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| TomG
Join Date: Feb 2002 Posts: 5406 Upper Ottawa Valley
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2003-03-21 51547
Thanks for filling in some of my blanks about deep-discharge batteries. Seems like I basicly got it right but if so then it was just good guessing on my part. ....
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