I have a Warn 8274 winch just sitting in my garage. I had a thought of putting it on my 1985 Bombardier Iltis, which is a 24 volt system. Can I do this?

The batteries are hooked up in series in the Iltis, can I just hook up the winch to one of the batteries????..................won't that still be 24 volts as the negative is hooked to positive of the second battery??

I feel I'm missing something and trying to think too far outside of the box on this voltage business???????????

 

In short, yes, you could hook the winch to one of your 12V batteries and it would work fine but no, you shouldn't since it will cause charging problems for that battery.

I'm sure that there are other solutions but I'd suggest a separate 12V battery for the winch and a 24V->12V voltage reducer to charge that battery. If you were running a low amp device like a radio or CB, you could run just off the voltage reducer but the winch will draw too many amps for that to work.

 

Jay pretty much nailed it. If you hook to just one battery it will cause charging issues. The load needs to be balanced.

There are several options, they all have advantages and disadvantages, a separate battery with a voltage reducer would work, but depending on how much you want/need to use it, you'll only have enough energy in the battery to run the winch, then you'll have to wait for it to charge back up.

How much winch work are you planning? If its once in a great while you run two pig tail connectors like the ones used on tow trucks for jumper cables and switch between the batteries manually to keep them balanced. Two volt meters, one on each battery to monitor them would be a good idea.

If you plan on using the winch a lot, then I would consider either a separate 12 volt battery with its own alternator or converting the winch to 24 volt operation.

 

The charging issues spoken of, would be the one would battery would lose charge and be out of balance with the other??

I really cannot say how much use it will get. Depending on the area I'm hunting. For deer on the farm it'll likely never get used. Out elk hunting way back out in the mountains near Grande Cache, it could be none to a lot depending on weather conditions.

In addition, there is no room for a separate battery or another alternator. It is a smaller machine, so it works great for what I bought it for.

That leaves me thinking of converting it to 24V.

So, the next question is, how do I do that? In some cases I'm very goos with electrical, and in this 24 volt case, I'll bow out to those better in the know.

Thanks for the replies gents.

 

Exactly, the problem with this is when the charging system tries to 'charge' the two batteries in series. For example two 12 volt batteries in series would give you 24 volts, to charge a 12 volt battery you usually need to be around 14 volts. So on a 24 volt system this is 28 volts.

So lets say the system is running fine, 28 volts when charging, 14 volts on each battery. You fire up your 12 volt winch and drain one battery down to 50% of its capacity, now the charging system is going to charge the discharged battery and over-charge the other battery.

If your aware of this and switch between batteries you won't have a problem, but that would be a pain.

 

I believe that winch came in both 12 and 24 volts. It would be interesting to see what the difference is. Could be an easy fix out there from Warn.

 

most dual voltage motors, the junction box will have multiple sets of wires that will allow you to connect the winding in series or parallel. wire them in series for high voltage, parallel for low voltage.

 

I am pretty sure you can hook it up to one battery and be fine. Just to let you know the Iltus has a set up that hooks onto the rims and you can use it to pull yourself out. unstucker kit. kinda neat to use.

 

Yep. Have unstuckers and have used them a lot. However, the whole premise of the winch is to:

1) get it off the floor of the garage, and
2) I've run into situations where rear hubs are inaccessible to use the unstuckers.

 

you could hook up a series/ parallel
switch then only the winch gets 12v had a few older trucks with them in it

 

Please explain this in some detail on how this works and how to do this.

 

older class 8 trucks ran 24volt starters and 12volt acc. like lights and radios
the switch has mounting lugs to hook two 12v batteries or 6volts what ever gives 12v to each side of the switch it also allows 24v for charge system yet you can pull 12v off one on the lugs and still get your batteries to charge I have a 1958 mack with a small bore 300 Cummins that uses this switch. something similar to the second one down

http://www.pjldiesel.com.au/docs/47.pdf