Mississippi-Mud Forums

Where is a good place to get winch relays? Do I need continous duty? I bought a winch without any relays for 50 bucks. Don't know what brand winch. The only thing I could find on the winch is it has a American Bosch motor. The winch works good with jumper cables.

post a pic of the winch. and yes i would say you will need continuos duty solenoids. all of the major winch manf. sell solenoids.if you have a good local parts store they can probably get them for you too.

Depending on how much power the winch requires you might be able to find some relays at Advance Auto or AutoZone. Look in the Wells book for heavy duty relays. They will be large metal can style relays instead of the square standard plastic style. I have one I use on my fog lights in my dakota that is rated for a major overkill of 80 amps continuous 200 amps surge (20% duty cycle if I recall correctly). The cost was very reasonable. I believe there are a couple of versions available such as "require ground wire for closing contact" (I have that style) and "ground through relay housing for closing".

WiLieR Wrote:D you might be able to find some relays at Advance Auto or AutoZone. Look in the Wells book for heavy duty relays. They will be large metal can style relays instead of the square standard plastic style. I have one I use on my fog lights in my dakota that is rated for a major overkill.

Sounds like something I probably need, I got my off road lights wired through relays (the cheepies at Oriely's) and they keep blowing....need to look at the continuous duties, I suspect...got a part no or anything?

No idea on the part number, but I will snap some pics in a bit and get them up. If I can find any numbers on the relay I will post that up as well.

Edited to add pics:

Here is an overall shot of it mounted above the driver's side inner fender.


Shot of the top showing how it is completely sealed.


Shot to give an idea of how large it is with my hand beside it.


No numbers found on it at all, so I will see if I can dig through some books at O'Reillys tomorrow to find some numbers.

I have heard that golf cart relays work.

What you have in this pic is an old ford starter relay about 15 bucks at autozone.

That is not an old style ford starter relay. Those are not rated for continuous use. I looked this one up in the Wells parts catalog when I worked at Discount Auto Parts, but that was many years ago and I can't recall the Wells number for it.

One similar to it is on http://www.mcmaster.com part number 7995k21
12 VDC SPST-NO 100amps@12v 4 terminals $30.27