second battery for winch and light bar

[weasel609]

Hey guys I just threw on a 12000lb Warn winch (had a bad experience with Superwinch) and just waiting on my 52" roof mount lightbar, so im gonna run a second battery. The way I was told to do this was to run the positive terminal from my primary battery into an isolator, and the positive from my second battery into the isolator, ground my second battery to the block or frame (leaving my primary ground as is) and tie in my accessories onto the second battery. Also have to brand new batteries cuz i guess just one new one isnt a good way to do it

 

[firebane]

Yup and make sure the batteries you have are the same as well.

 

[weasel609]

nice! yeah i went out and bought two identical AGM batteries

 

[firebane]

And would probably be a good time to upgrade to a CS130 or CS144 alternator as well to ensure its pumping out enough juice.

This isn't one of those things you want to skim out on.

 

[theblindchicken]

Depending on the isolator style, the batteries may or may not need to be the same.

If they were continuously hooked up in parallel (12v system @ double amps), the would need to be the same batteries to ensure that one isn't constantly draining the other.

If they're hooked up via automatic isolator or a switched isolator, you shouldn't have any issue running different batteries.

Circuit sounds fine.

 

[weasel609]

so i had some horrible parasitic draw going on. had to head south for a week, came home to do some mudding and both batteries were stone dead. tried tracing the drain via multi meter and pulling fuses, monitoring the draw level. and the weirdest thing happened. my draw inceased as i pulled fuses. start was a draw of 2.3 amps and by the end it was up to 5.7. so i reran the batteries in parrallel + to + and ran - to - (as opposed to having my second batt grounded to the frame) and removed the automatic isolator from the equation. BOOM! draw dropped to 0.01. happy happy. other than the $175 isolator i bought that does seem to have worked, or i installed backwards if thats possible