Stalling while using winch

Jody Treadway

Jody Treadway

Croc wearing fool
Moderator
Joined
Mar 20, 2005
Location
Hendersonville, NC
Big thanks to @shawn for some help diagnosing this issue. Once I clean 3" of Harlan mud off my chassis, I will do some testing. Until then...

On my Ranger, when using the winch (although I RARELY have to :flipoff2:) my engine will nearly immediately die. If using the winch under no load it will die unless I rev it up over 2k. Under load, it will immediately stall. Regardless, it always re-cranks just fine.

Here's how things are set up.
Battery is in the bed area. It is a typical Advance Auto battery, nothing fancy. Grounded via cable directly to chassis. The + side goes to a standard disconnect and then up the frame to a junction block where it splits off to the solenoid and also to the winch. That is where my problem lies most likely.

In a perfect world, I would run the winch straight to the battery like most people do, but I would have 2 cables each one 8-10' long. Or would that be a bad thing?

I am going to perform a voltage drop test to see how bad the drop is. So assuming I need new, larger diameter cables (and better routing) what gauge and type of cable would be best? What about cable ends?

Thoughts?
 
I'd leave the battery and winch grounded to the frame, but clean the connection real well, maybe use those star washers like the factory does on grounds.

I like welding cable for homemade battery cables. The biggest you can get. 1/0 or 2/0 cable if you can find it.

The voltage drop when winching probably shuts the ecu down. Check your battery too. Barry (the guy with the ugly blue clone of my truck, lol) had a battery internal short that showed up on Mason Jar in the pouring rain. It had enough juice to start the truck but when he started winching it would stall. We finally put one of my batteries (I use two 24f interstate regular batteries) in his truck so we could get the hell out of there. We had to warranty his Oreilly battery in Harlan.

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The first thing that comes to mind is that your alt is under wattage so the load is putting too much drag on the alt pulley stalling the engine? is that possible?

This is what comes to mind, but i got no experience to go on here. Or, conversely, is it a combination of a smaller alt with a under rated battery, which results in the winch starving the watts from the coils, which is only countered by rev'ing (more alt spin, more available watts)? These are the two things that click in my head
 
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I put 1ga. welding cable in when I relocated my solenoid box about 4 feet away from the winch and 2 feet away from the battery. My alternator and small battery are another story. Under load it about saps all of my power.

You could be safe and step up to 1/0 welding cable if you never want to mess with it again since you are going close to 10’.


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I'd also try to get the junction block as close to the battery as possible and tie the winch, the starter and or main truck feed in there. Make sure the alt charge wire is at least an 8 ga if you're running a Ford 130a 3g alternator. It can tie in at the starter if needed, and charge back through the heavy starter cable.

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Couple points on mobile...

Not all wire is equal. For example in one "type" of wre you might need 2/0 where as with another type you might only need 0.

As a general rule the more smalller strands of copper the more ampacity carrying capability for a given size.

A very small capacitor in line with the ecu may be a solution as well.
 
Also...IF (huge word) you have good connections to the frame at both ends, there is little or no advantage to a separate cable. Now getting that good of connections can be the challenge.
 
Jody Treadway said:
High Speed 9.5Ti.
Click to expand...

Have you checked the winch itself.

When my motor quit on my 9.5ti it had an internal short but would still function, but amp draw was ridiculous. It was trying to power in and out at same time.

Check all solenoids and wiring, only to talk to warn and troubleshoot.

Powered the connections on the motor itself directly and discovered the motor issue. Warn said “it’s from not enough use”.

Just another thing to check, may want to verify it first before you chase a ghost in the system.

I replaced it with a spare Ramsey winch I had laying around. The warn is still sitting covered in dust.

The symptoms sound identical to the trouble I had with mine. Checked everything only to find out it was the winch motor itself.
 
Jody Treadway said:
On my Ranger, when using the winch (although I RARELY have to :flipoff2:) my engine will nearly immediately die. If using the winch under no load it will die unless I rev it up over 2k. Under load, it will immediately stall. Regardless, it always re-cranks just fine.
Click to expand...

TPS, has to be because that was my problem last time I was in Harlan :flipoff2:
 
When we talked about this on Saturday, my first guess from the description is that you have voltage drop issue that's pulling the ECM down below its minimum voltage (something like 11V on those Fords, IIRC??), and the ECM just shuts off. Give it some gas, the alternator output bumps up enough to keep the voltage up under load, and it doesn't stall.

The first thing I would check is for bad connections. Take a voltmeter set to VDC and test the voltage at the following locations UNDER LOAD:

1. Battery neg to chassis
2. Winch neg to chassis
3. Battery pos to terminal block
4. Terminal block to winch
5. Alternator to terminal block (why not)

All of them - except for #5 - can be done with the engine off and the winch running. If the engine dies when the winch is running but in free spool, that'll make the troubleshooting a whole lot easier, since you know you don't have to put a load on the winch to cause problems.

For good measure, I'd probably go from the battery cable end of the terminal block to the winch when measuring on that side. That's to rule out a bad connection in the terminal block itself. I wouldn't expect to see a voltage drop at any of those locations of more than about 0.2VDC. If you see a drop of more than that, retest at a smaller scale. For example, if there's a 1.2V drop between the pos terminal and the terminal block, measure from the pos terminal to the shutoff switch, measure across the shutoff switch, measure from the switch to the junction block, etc. If there is a bad connection, a corroded/broken wire, or anything along those lines, you'll pick it up in that test.

Also, check the voltage at the battery when the winch is running. I don't think it should drop below 12VDC in free spool, and really should stay up around 12.4V or so. That won't necessarily tell you if the battery is good, but **if everything else comes back clean**, it'll tell you that either the winch is pulling too much current (maybe Scott's problem), or the battery is on its last legs.
 
Ron said:
A very small capacitor in line with the ecu may be a solution as well.
Click to expand...

Will not work. The capacitor drains, and then there is not enough voltage to charge it. Capacitors are only useful for very short transients (depending on the capacitor size, current draw, voltage drop, etc.) so if the voltage drops for more than a few milliseconds (that would be a large cap), the cap is useless and then itself becomes an electrical load when the voltage increases until the cap is charged back up.
 
You've seen my pile of parts.... My battery is in the rear. I run a Smittybuilt x20 10K atm. I have a 1/0 "welding wire" from the alternator to the battery and a 1/0 wire to a power distribution block under the hood. Winch attaches at the distribution block and both ground to the unibody. Winch up front battery in rear. I had a similar problem and it was corroded terminals. I have found with my battery in the rear they need cleaning more than they did under the hood. I should probably put something on them to deter it.
 
I have a ramsey 9k that had only been used proably 10 times in the last 8 years. I was using it to move a tree at my house and it actually turned the engine ground glowing red. I replaced the ground with a new one and it worked but also drops my voltage pretty low.
 
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Fabrik8 said:
Will not work. The capacitor drains, and then there is not enough voltage to charge it. Capacitors are only useful for very short transients (depending on the capacitor size, current draw, voltage drop, etc.) so if the voltage drops for more than a few milliseconds (that would be a large cap), the cap is useless and then itself becomes an electrical load when the voltage increases until the cap is charged back up.
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Hrmmm I was assuming the voltage drop was due to a lag in alternator excitation and ramp. In which case I was suggesting a small cap bank to ride the ECM through the dip. Think of it as a station battery or even a mini UPS.
Now if in fact the voltage drop is because of inadequate charge capacity hat a whole other ball of wax, and I agree a cap isnt going to ride through that.
 
Ron said:
Hrmmm I was assuming the voltage drop was due to a lag in alternator excitation and ramp. In which case I was suggesting a small cap bank to ride the ECM through the dip. Think of it as a station battery or even a mini UPS.
Now if in fact the voltage drop is because of inadequate charge capacity hat a whole other ball of wax, and I agree a cap isnt going to ride through that.
Click to expand...

The alternator is never going to be able to cover the full power requirements of the winch, so I wouldn't even go down that road. I put bigger alts on both of our Jeeps, and at full pull, the ECM thinks that the alternator is malfunctioning and shuts it off. Everything runs fine off the battery until you restart the engine.
 
shawn said:
The alternator is never going to be able to cover the full power requirements of the winch, so I wouldn't even go down that road. I put bigger alts on both of our Jeeps, and at full pull, the ECM thinks that the alternator is malfunctioning and shuts it off. Everything runs fine off the battery until you restart the engine.
Click to expand...

What about a small station battery bewteen the alternator and ECM with a diode to prevent draw down back feeding the winch?

Or just run a separate, isolated, winch battery...thatd be ideal
 
Ron said:
What about a small station battery bewteen the alternator and ECM with a diode to prevent draw down back feeding the winch?
Click to expand...

That would be ideal, and is done frequently for this situation. The minor drawbacks are the voltage drop across the diode, and the lack of control for charging the individual batteries of different sizes/types. The small battery is only ever going to charge to the local system voltage minus the Vf (forward voltage drop) across the diode, but that will only be 0.3-0.5VDC usually.

Accident data recorders have backup like that, and have an intelligent power supply built in to handle all the battery charging, etc., and put the battery on a bidirectional path instead of being directly connected to main power, very similar to how a 120VAC UPS works in a building.
 
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I'd run a separate cable for the engine/ecm from the winch feed cable. Depending on the gauge you might be getting enough voltage drop being remote mounted battery to fall below minimum operating voltage. I know I've winched my Jeep battery dead with it running & stalled it before, but that's a different issue. (Long hard pull)
 
Thanks all. Gonna start with cleaning the connections really well and then likely going to upgrade the cables due to age.
They are all a mix of 4 gauge with a little 2 here and there.
Keep the tech coming as this sort of thing effects a lot of us
 
If you can anyway possible squeeze in a second battery, that would be a huge help. Like Shawn said, the alternator only puts out 130 to 200 amps on most rigs (or less). The winch can pull well over that, the more load the more draw, and a fast pull winch will draw more too since the motor and/or gearing is different. It's having to do the same work faster. I've seen 300 + amps with a clamp meter just standing on the brakes respooling on flat ground with my mile marker 12000.

I've got two 24f interstate batteries 1000 CA, 800cca wire in parallel like a modern diesel truck with no isolate or disconnect switch. I've got both of mine under hood where the stock battery tray was. But that gives me 1600 cca to play with, when winching my volt gauge will drop to 12 from 14, but that's it which is great because my TBI computer will kill the injectors at 10v. Granted I have more room than most with an f150, but if you can make it work that's a big help.

They don't even have to be side by side. Barry has one under the hood and one in a toolbox behind the cab. Both wired parallel constantly with welding cable.

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