Hooked winch to battery, now wont crank?

Hello,

Just this morning I hooked my new Smittybilt X2O 10k winch up to my battery. Running aftermarket battery, don't remember brand (came with used 2011 jeep when I bought it in 2014). Never had battery issues before.

The winch is wired correctly according to factory diagram (triple checked) There are no kinks or frays in the (+) or (-) running from the winch to the battery. Winch wires are connected to the "winch only post" on my Quadratec HD battery terminal. Remote was not plugged in, and wireless function was turned off on both solenoid and the remote.

Problem is battery wont crank, gave a half start at first, then one click only. Headlights and dash lights didn't seem to be dim though. :thinking:

I had some time before work today and had planned to spool the winch under tension with my neighbors help, but ended up having to get help giving a ride to work (and show up late) instead

Any ideas for when I get home? Am considering just having someone run me by autozone or sears to get a better battery (was on the list anyway) but am afraid if there is an issue it might kill new battery too?

Are there other accessories connected to the rest of the posts? I would disconnect the winch and try again. Then disconnect other stuff one by one to see if one of them is causing weirdness. If you have a multimeter handy you can check the battery charge. Make sure everything is tight on the terminals? I hate when you make one simple change and everything goes south. That sucks.

Uninstall the winch +/- and see if it cranks again. Then you know it something with the connections. Then check all connections and ground wires.

My experience is you can't connect the winch straight to the main post connections as it has the clamp on it to get a full terminal connection. So check that out as well.

Make sure the battery post it properly tightened. That's a problem a lot of times, because of the nature of the terminal.

Swapped out the battery and the problem went away. It was a few years old anyway...
Still very odd that it happened exactly when I decided to hook up a winch. I would like to know if it was causality or coincidence. But whatever. Time to go get stuck somewhere.:rock:

kferrarini said:

Swapped out the battery and the problem went away. It was a few years old anyway...
Still very odd that it happened exactly when I decided to hook up a winch. I would like to know if it was causality or coincidence. But whatever. Time to go get stuck somewhere.:rock:

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Chances are it was coincidence if the battery was a few years old anyway it was likely already going out. I would assume you also tested to make sure the thing was getting power and such so it likely just showed with the load on it what was about to happen anyway. At least it happened at home not on a trail lol

Also I learned the hard way and now change my battery as soon as the warranty period is up on them. Got stuck 50 miles from the middle of nowhere once due to a battery issue.

Yeah the battery in mind died one night without warning. Drove in parked it at about 7pm come out 6am next day and it was totally dead not even a click

2nd.gunman said:

Yeah the battery in mind died one night without warning. Drove in parked it at about 7pm come out 6am next day and it was totally dead not even a click

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Yep. It sucks that they seldom give a warning unlike the alternator which will generally start spiking before it goes