Thermal cut out for a winch

Hi, want to fit a thermal cut out switch on my winch but not sure where I would connect it to, which wires etc ? Anyone know ?

i thought winces came with a thermal cutout?

From what I know of thermal cut-outs, and I'm prepared to be contradicted on this, there are basically two types of cut-outs.

Type one is fitted in the main power line from the battery and will trip when the current being drawn by the winch is too high, but not high enough to blow a fuse for a period of time, not to be confused with a fuse which will blow when the current is significantly higher than expected for a short period of time. A fuse must be replaced after the fault is cleared and a thermal cut-out can be reset when the circuit conditions cool down again.

The second type is built into the winch motor windings and will trip when the windings get too hot because the motor is working beyond its expected limitations. This type will often reset automatically once the motor is allowed to cool down again, although some are fitted with a small button somewhere, or some other method to manually reset it when the motor has cooled down.

The in-line type should be installed in the main power feed from the battery but after the in-line fuse.

If your winch has an internal thermal cut-out then I don't think there's much to be gained by installing an additional in-line thermal cut-out.

Just retro fit one to the side of the motor housing with a vr resistor and you can set temperatures to cut the low powerfeed from +ve to the solonoids simple enough getting the temperature set may take some time tho

Thanks guys, will look in to this, my winch stopped working so I stripped it down and found that due to water ingress, corrosion and lack of use it had a dead short, when I stripped it down there was a resistor looking component that was connected to the brushes post but the other end had broken off, tried to identify where it went but to no avail, rebuilt winch bench tested it and it now works great, I believe that the resistor looking thing was actually the thermal cut out and that's why i want to fit an external one.

Winch is a Britpart DB1200i, it was already on when defender was bought.

I presume that the motor as a DC motor has a segmented commutator. That "resistor like" component could have been a capacitor used for spark quench.

High power motors are likely to produce sparks at the brushes where they run on the commutator. The spark quench components will significantly reduce the arcing, thereby prolonging the life of the motor.

brian47 said:

I presume that the motor as a DC motor has a segmented commutator. That "resistor like" component could have been a capacitor used for spark quench.

High power motors are likely to produce sparks at the brushes where they run on the commutator. The spark quench components will significantly reduce the arcing, thereby prolonging the life of the motor.

Click to expand...

Oopps, asked on here but others not sure what it was, will have to keep an eye on it then when in use. If it was a kind of spark resistor then maybe I still need an in line thermal cut off switch, not got it refitted yet but it worked fine on bench test.
Picture below should show brushes new and old and spark resistor/thermal switch.