Hi, I own a 2008 Cat 305C CR. I am looking at installing a 3 to 4000 lbs electric winch. I would install on the blade and would use it to pull some small trees before I grab them with my bucket and thumb. Has anyone done that? How's the electrical part of this would work? Thanks for any insights on this new project!
I can't imagine how practical it would be to use, but if you think it would work for you then why not? I think you would have to install a bigger and/or second battery to handle the current draw, and even then you may find that the alternator can't keep up.
Thanks @Cmark for your answer. I am look at an ATV winch. I can't really imagine the alternator of my Cat won't be able to keep up if one from an ATV can. But again, I have not experience with all of that.
First off.....most atv's don't have alternators, they use a stator. Not much output there, the battery takes the load. I would probably go larger, move up to an 8000 lb winch, no reason why it won't work. Add a second (or larger) battery if needed, depends on your duty cycle with the winch. I have a 4000lb warn on my Ranger, impressive what it'll pull, but it's always one and done. I don't do one pull after another. Hydraulic is always another option.... Ed
That cat has a 50 amp alternator.... but I don't know what the machine uses of that to do it's normal running and what not... at any rate if it were me I would add an extra battery(and charge isolator)for the winch since you indicated it would be used a bit more than just a one time a day thing.
An ATV winch is not a yarder, they are really slow
Would it be better to use a hydraulic winch off a chipper, plumb it into the blade ram with a change over valve?
The size of alternator has little do do with it as it takes time to return the charge to the battery which all alternators are capable of doing. Having a battery capacity to handle the intended duty cycle of the winch is the go. Was considering doing the same at one point to my mini by mounting a small winch that would fit into a standard tow hitch receiver on my blade so i could remove easily. I could have made a set of custom slip rings to get power down there but lost interest, also considered just using a big Anderson plug over to the house but that would have been a pain i think. A small atv winch on the back of the boom or on the outside of house in front of your feet would have worked also. If i went that way power to winch was easy and i think i would have fitted a deep vee pulley on my quick hitch so i could just put the cable in that for lifts or just pulling from higher elevation if needed. The small atv winches are cheep as chips on ebay and are good in that the don't draw to much current but in your case you would want to use some dyneema rope to get a bit of distance with your pulls as the drums are a bit small. The down side is if you go to a bigger winch for bigger drum every thing gets bigger, cables battery, weight,etc. If you have alot of winching then hydraulic is the go off course.
How would you get the wiring and control cable to the blade without having some sort of electrical swivel? The hydraulic idea seems better if you could find one
I see most of the little atv winches these days come with a wireless control fob(some big ones too), but yeah you'd still have to get power to it so like was mentioned earlier use an andersen connection that will break free if you swing too far.
I can see how a winch would be useful to retrieve firewood from piles left behind by loggers on steep terrain. Electric winches are made in China nowadays, I would get the biggest one I could find.
After a few full pulls your battery (or second battery) will be dead - they pull a LOT of amps for their tiny size. They also have very short duty cycles so you don't want to pull for 10 minutes straight or you will burn them up. They are not good for logging nor made for it. Go hydraulic if you want a logging winch and you can do what you want.
If you can go ,hydraulic I would.
I would think all the time your messing with the winch you could run a choker around the log and reach out with the bucket and drag it in. You have almost 20' of reach with a 305cr and if you swing you could get over 30' of pull each time and faster then with a winch.
I think either electric or hydraulic could be made to work. For what you're talking about, I'd get some 1/4" g70 chains, and build a catch on your loader bucket, and one that would attach to your blade and stick out far enough that you could keep tension on the chain to grab it easily and keep pulling. On second thought, maybe just climb out and rehook the chain a few times. Or become a shovel logger like Peej says.
Thanks to everybody for your input, it's much appreciated. I think I'll start with a long chain/choker and see if I move towards a winch after.
Yeah, it really depends on how far you want to winch them... cause a lot of the smaller winches don't have a lot of line on them and if you take a bigger winch and throw smaller dyneema type line on it to get extra distance your setup would probably have the line in the dirt a lot which would kill that type of line fast unfortunately plus you start running into the duty cycle issues on the winch then...