Thread: Traxide's SC40

LRHybrid100's post on Traxide's dual battery controller reminded me to post something about my install.

I posted the wire-up of my winch a while ago on the LRA forum, but I never did get around to posting it here. I should do it now because I also have one of Traxide's SC40 units, but I use it in Accessories mode, to prevent the Aux battery from over-discharging.

Here's the story of the winch wiring:

I have a young nephew who's an industrial sparky and had him lined up get me some 35mm cable cheap. It turns out they don't use stuff that small very often where he works, so the best he could do was trade price. He turns up the next day with 30m of 50mm double insulated cable they use on boilers, that I could have for free. Well, what could I say, really. Actually what I did say was, "now go away and get me a loan of an hydraulic crimper, I'm not crimping those lugs on with a manual one", which he duly did.

I've had a home made (Electronics Aust) split charge controller connected to the 2 Exide Orbitals for a while now, but I thought it was time to finally install the SC40 'Discharge Controller' that's been sitting in the shed for ages. This little do-hicky isolates that Aux battery from the accessories circuit if the voltage drops below 10.5V, just to prevent permanent damage being done. Here's the charge controller and discharge controllers installed before the batteries went back in:



and another showing the circuit breakers and the disctribution fuse block for the Aux battery:



If I was doing it all again, I wouldn't bother with the Electronics Aust version of the charge controller, the Traxide jobbie is damn good value.

Unfortunately the battery box is now getting crowed. The charge controllers and circuit breakers now take up space that the relays for the A/C, central locking and alarm module used to occupy. I moved them to the front of the battery box:



I wanted to be able to isolate the power to the winch and most of the isolators I could find were only rated at something like 250A continuous. This seemed to be a fair bit light on for me. The solution was a marine battery switch, which is rated at 350A continuous and 600A for 5 minutes. This not only provides for isolating the power to the winch, it also allows me to power the winch from either or both batteries. A bonus is in 'both' mode, it will bypass the charge controller in case that ever has a hissy fit.



All installed with both batteries back in place, there isn't much room left at all. It's just as well all the relays for driving lights, headlights, compressor, booster fan etc are in a separate waterproof box under the left wing.



And finally, I picked up a little thing on ebay (ex Canada I think). Someone was selling original Warn stickers which looked like just the thing for the top of the bullbar where the freespool lever pokes through:



Pail [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif[/img]

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE</div><div class='quotemain'>and if you need to relocate any of your relays there is space under the centre console[/b][/quote]

That's a good idea! I'll have to remember that one. :wink:

Paul [img]style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif[/img]