hey guys, I have a ‘86 60 with dual batteries and right now the wiring is a mess so I and going to rewrite most of it. My question is should all the accessories (winch, lights, inverter, amp) be connected to the deep cycle battery? I saw a video from another mfg and they suggested hooking those up to the starting battery and it didn’t quite make sense to me.
Hell Roaring Isolator (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Matt0311
- Start date
This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate
links, including eBay, Amazon, Skimlinks, and others.
It's a toss up (for the winch).
A winch requires a ton of CCA to pull hard and deep cycle batteries don't usually have a high CCA rating. Starting batteries do.
A deep cycle battery can tolerate more deep cycles though than a starting battery.
Also the starting battery is connected directly to the alternator, where the 2nd battery has to run a longish wire to reach it.
When winching, you really can't deeply discharge the battery much before the winch wants to conk out due to lack of amps and more importantly heat build up in the winch. Winching is more of a short pull, wait to recharge/cool, short pull etc affair rather than a long haul slog until the battery is shot. 1:8 seemed like my usual run:wait schedule
In my experience, a heavy winching session (hours) will damage any battery. A deep cycle battery won't prevent that. Either type get severely aged from the experience.
So I say go for for CCA instead of deep cycle for the winch. The winch will get more power... until it overheats.
A winch requires a ton of CCA to pull hard and deep cycle batteries don't usually have a high CCA rating. Starting batteries do.
A deep cycle battery can tolerate more deep cycles though than a starting battery.
Also the starting battery is connected directly to the alternator, where the 2nd battery has to run a longish wire to reach it.
When winching, you really can't deeply discharge the battery much before the winch wants to conk out due to lack of amps and more importantly heat build up in the winch. Winching is more of a short pull, wait to recharge/cool, short pull etc affair rather than a long haul slog until the battery is shot. 1:8 seemed like my usual run:wait schedule
In my experience, a heavy winching session (hours) will damage any battery. A deep cycle battery won't prevent that. Either type get severely aged from the experience.
So I say go for for CCA instead of deep cycle for the winch. The winch will get more power... until it overheats.
Last edited:
A separate question from deep cycle vs start battery is how to add the second battery. Hellroaring gives good advice to attach all loads to the main battery and have the second battery solely as a back up. This allows for the least amount of wiring changes to the vehicle and keeps the back up as a true back up with no loads attached. Running a main battery and a house battery creates a scenario where you could deplete both from leaving headlights on to kill the main and a fridge to kill the house.
I've tried it several ways and like the true back up the best. Ideally, you have a manual switch to disconnect the main. This way if the main is truly dead, you aren't combining it with your back up. If the main is only low, then flipping the jump switch on the combiner will produce a start without having to fiddle under the hood.
I run a deep cycle as my main and have had good luck with battery life but I'm not running a winch on my DD. I'd think your choice comes down to past experience in how your usage killed your batteries in the past. For me, I killed more start batteries by deep cycling them in the cold than deep cycles which I drew down too fast.
My experience with HR is that the solid state relay does leak a few mili amps. If you have large stereo amps with built in capacitors, it will draw down the battery like a modern car. If its on your DD and you run it every few days, its not a problem. A manual switch or a solenoid is the only way to get true isolation. Surepower units will not work on 60 series alternators.
I've tried it several ways and like the true back up the best. Ideally, you have a manual switch to disconnect the main. This way if the main is truly dead, you aren't combining it with your back up. If the main is only low, then flipping the jump switch on the combiner will produce a start without having to fiddle under the hood.
I run a deep cycle as my main and have had good luck with battery life but I'm not running a winch on my DD. I'd think your choice comes down to past experience in how your usage killed your batteries in the past. For me, I killed more start batteries by deep cycling them in the cold than deep cycles which I drew down too fast.
My experience with HR is that the solid state relay does leak a few mili amps. If you have large stereo amps with built in capacitors, it will draw down the battery like a modern car. If its on your DD and you run it every few days, its not a problem. A manual switch or a solenoid is the only way to get true isolation. Surepower units will not work on 60 series alternators.
Last edited:
Really if you look at the systems from National Luna and T-Max, Dirtly Parts (and others), this is how they are setup.
Primary is where everything is connected and Backup is for, well backup and jump in case. Most people however connected them like a camper where the 2nd battery runs all the electronics and the primary is for starting the vehicle. the difference is they do not fully isolate the primary battery.
Your winch should be on the starting battery always. One of the manufactures even recommends this. A deep cycle should be the backup and the primary should should be a normal hi CCA battery (most you can get). If you are winching that much, I will assume a rock crawler and in that case then all above does not matter and run it as you wish.
