Winch Drawing Power from Small Battery?

Good Morning ,

I am at the tail end of a VR800 Warn Winch install and am dealing with the electrical side of things. I am relocating the solenoid box under the hood and have plans and materials to deal with the new cables (1/0 welding cable and proper battery lugs).

I don’t have a giant budget at the moment but one thing that needs to be addressed is the battery. I don’t remember the size of my battery except that I checked and it is only 500 Cold Cranking Amps. It is modestly sized as it isn’t stuffed into the battery location.

Warn recommends in the manual that the battery be 650 Cold Cranking Amps minimum. My dilemma is that I have a wheeling trip coming up in a week and a half and I want to have this winch connected by then. I have run this trail a handful of times before with no recovery needed but if there is a chance I have to pull the cable for myself or someone else is the worst thing that will happen to my small battery is that it could be zapped/dead? I will take that chance as I will be in company that can help a jeep with a dead battery.

Can the battery theoretically explode because of the amp draw?

BTW I plan on buying the biggest Sears diehard battery I can fit when the money comes in.

TIA

Nick

You'll be fine.

Always use a snatch block when winching. Twice the pulling power and half the speed.

First off, you should if at all possible have the motor running when operating the winch. That way the alternator provides the bulk of the current. Even a small battery will work, it just won't pull for as long a time before being discharged.

The Cold Cranking Amps has to do with how much current the battery can provide without the voltage dropping too far. In electrical terms it is called internal impedance. That comes from having more plate surface area in the battery. It just happens that more surface area not only allows you to pull more, it also means you can pull it for longer.

Almost every competition buggy has a winch on a small battery. Fine to recover yourself. Not fine to winch your friends RV 80 feet through the mud.

cal said:

Almost every competition buggy has a winch on a small battery. Fine to recover yourself. Not fine to winch your friends RV 80 feet through the mud.

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A good translation from geekspeak to English.

The autozone batteries arnt too bad, I have a 1100CCA battery I got there about 2 years ago, it wasn't a fortune

As other's have said, your battery should be fine. And, worst case, there will be a bunch of us there if you do have any trouble. I've been using my winch for about 4 years now on a small battery. The cheap Autozone one is what I used for the first 3 years and it did just fine.