Hi All...

I am just curious what sized fuses and/or circuit breakers you guys use to protect your big cables you run to your boot... As a sparky I'm normally not one for putting bigger protection on a cable for the sake of protecting its insulation...

I have 8awg run and jaycar rates it at 56amps continuous... I lean toward fuses over circuit breakers because under short circuit (rubs through or someone shorts it out), a fuse will operate before a circuit breaker (only blown 1 ever so not real dear)...

This is for the sake of the winch I have mounted on my trailer to make it into a tipper... I have an anderson plug in the boot it plugs into and I pull up at the tip, plug it in, tip the trailer out, unplug it and drive home... But lately it has been good for pulling out small trees and that but it may better if it were allowed some more amps (blown fuse once)... In saying that the alternator is rated at 70 so I may not be gaining anything anyway...

Just curious on any opinions...

If you guys can tell me what sized cable you run, what means of protection you used, and what's its rated that be good...

I currently have 8awg, fuse protected, at 60amps

Cheers,
Tim

I ran 0 guage on my old winch.

No fuses or circuit breakers unless there were some inside the winch. From all the reading I did they pulled too many amps to get something that wouldnt short out.

The cables wouldnt have been more than half a metre long either.

Yeah this is only a small winch I should mention... 4000Lb But more than enough to make my tipper trailer... And very handy to drag stuff onto the trailer and pull s**t out of the garden (helps to adopt the lazy, back protecting stance sometimes )...

Usually you mount your winch in your 4wd's in the bull bar so you have a whole 1m run of cable and the risk of damaging the insulation is next to nil... So I understand the concept of not running a fuse... A 16000lb winch would draw a s**t load... My cable runs from the fuse block under the bonnet to the boot... Under carpet and around edges and its bushed through steel work and that... But I'd hate for it to short out so I do sooner run a fuse... Piece of mind thing...

This winch with a snatch (to half the current) at 4000lb is rated at something like 180amps... So not huge... But it wont be getting the full 180amp capacity I can guarantee that...

Cheers,
Tim