Battery Kill Switch (1 Viewer)

[tgreco]

I’m in the process of relocating my battery to the bed of my truck. While I’m at it, I want to plumb in a kill switch. After lots of reading, Im opting to put it on the positive cable prior to powering any accessories (willing to be persuaded differently). The purpose of the switch is to kill power in an emergency situation (e.g. rollover, stuck winch, etc) and not for general storage to avoid drains.

I bought two switches with the following load ratings:

Blue Sea 3000:
Continuous 600A
Intermittent 900A (up to 5 min)
Cranking 1750A

RingBrothers 99000-6105:
Continuous 275A
Intermittent 455A (up to 5 min)
Cranking 1275A

My biggest concern is capacity of the switch while winching. I’m running a Smittybuilt 9500 and the max amp draw looks to be about 440A with average draw around 200A.

I’m running 1/0 welding wire from the battery to the switch and then to a positive stud in the engine bay which will power the winch.

I guess it seems somewhat obvious to go with the BlueSea but the other switch has a better enclosed design as I’m also worried about shorting this junction as it will be in the cab. It’s also smaller and easier to package. While it doesn’t seem like I winch for 5 min straight, I guess it is probable that it would happen at some point.

Which would you go with?

 

[jynx]

The rating of the RingBrothers unit seems within your limits. Obviously the blue sea unit is rated for way more than you'll ever need. What's the concern with the blue sea enclosure?

 

[tgreco]

The rating of the RingBrothers unit seems within your limits. Obviously the blue sea unit is rated for way more than you'll ever need. What's the concern with the blue sea enclosure?

I’d like to mount the switch on the trans tunnel which is just sheet metal. I like that the smaller switch is fully enclosed. The bottom terminals on the BlueSea would be really close to the mounting surface. I could definitely construct something to keep the studs away from metal but its design seems more prone to a short. This will be in the cab which is why I’m more worried than maybe I should be.

The other option is just wire the winch straight to the battery and switch everything else. This is allowed in the Ultra 4 rules, so I guess I may be overthinking needing to plumb it through this switch?

Pics below.

 

[jynx]

Yep, I see what your talking about. I'd use the small one. If your worried about the ratings, then you could do like you mentioned and just straight wire the winch. But looking at the ratings, I think you'd be ok running the winch then the RB switch. 275 vs 200 and 455 vs 440, your within the limits of that with the winch too. The max amps would likely only be a problem if you were making a hard pull at night with lights on at a higher rpm.

 

[TeddyBoy]

Its been awhile but I ran a positive/negative cable from the battery located behind he passenger seat to a positive & negative post located near the firewall and mounted the kill switch. Then I extended the main fuse box feed to the other side of the switch so the switch would kill everything except the winch.

The winch I just wired directly to the + and - posts taking the Kill switch out of the circuit so it would work regardless. I highly recommend installing in cab controls using and on/off switch and a momentary in/out toggle switch both can me found on amazon for cheap. If I recall the On/Off was 30 amp.

One last thing, get rid of that damned ignition key and install a push to start button while you're at it.