I went trail riding with some friends today and got to try out my winch for the first time. It worked like a charm and glad I had it because the guy who was stuck couldn't get his winch to work. After the pull, which was a fairly hard pull and about 30ft, we continued on. Shorty after I noticed my battery light was on. I got out and found that I had left the winch turned on. I continued on and after about 30 mins we broke for lunch. I restarted my JK and no more light. Could leaving the winch on cause this?? I didn't think it would be drawing anything from the battery unless I was actually using it. During the pull, I had another friend operate the winch while I held the brakes and kept the idle up around 2k. So what gives? Any ideas?

 

The winch draws a lot more than the alternator can provide, so you probably depleted the battery to the point it threw a warning light. Sounds like it went out after the battery got some juice back into it.

 

Army recovery equipment requires the engine to be in neutral and RPM's at 1200+ while winching, hoisting, etc. Probably not a bad idea to increase RPM's while winching. How is your winch hooked to your battery? Do you have heavy duty terminals that are meant for large energy draw equipment? Just a couple of thoughts.

 

I have an Optima red top and the winch is hooked to the battery using the stock JK terminals which are basically just thin metal rings. I noticed that Quadratec has some "heavy duty" replacement terminals, maybe this would be the way to go.

 

won't make a difference and a red top isn't up to the task of hard winching. if anything, you really needed a yellow top which is a deep cycle battery and intended for heavy use. but, even at that, i have found optimas to be junk and now run diehard platinum p-1 which are essentially repackaged Odyssey's and work exceptionally well.

 

Thanks for the advise. I know the Redtop isn't ideal for winching being a starting battery, but its been good to me so I can't complain. I actually pulled it out of the wifes explorer before we sold it and stuck it in the JK when I bought it. I'll be looking at the diehard platinum/ odyssey deep cycle down the road when the time comes for a new battery.