bbbbRASS
bbbbRASS Reader
4/4/25 10:20 p.m.

I don't think you're missing anything. Just waterproof, fuse positives close to battery (and charge source), and wrap your wires. 

wvumtnbkr
wvumtnbkr UltimaDork
4/4/25 11:22 p.m.

Why not just run the lights powered from the tow vehicle?

wae
wae UltimaDork
4/5/25 8:25 a.m.

I have the breakaway system mounted down low and to the side, using its own battery.  For the winch, I've got a regular car battery in the box and I use a solar battery charger/maintainer to keep it topped up.  So far, it's never failed to give me enough power to run the winch for fairly long periods of time so I'd guess a similar setup would work for some lights.

codrus (Forum Supporter)
codrus (Forum Supporter) UltimaDork
4/5/25 11:02 a.m.
wae said:

I have the breakaway system mounted down low and to the side, using its own battery.  For the winch, I've got a regular car battery in the box and I use a solar battery charger/maintainer to keep it topped up.  So far, it's never failed to give me enough power to run the winch for fairly long periods of time so I'd guess a similar setup would work for some lights.

I'm not sure what good it is to have the separate small battery at that point.  Assuming you're charging them both off the truck's 12V wire and you don't have any specialized electronics to isolate them, that means they're both supplying power in parallel to the winch so the small battery isn't really providing any redundancy for the brake system.

I have a single 100 amp-hour AGM RV battery in my trailer that I use for everything, including the breakaway system.  It's an enclosed trailer so I charge it with a solar panel on the roof.

 

wae
wae UltimaDork
4/5/25 1:49 p.m.

In reply to codrus (Forum Supporter) :

Well, you see, it's quite simple.  I'm a lazy motherberkeleyer.  The breakaway system just does what it does the way they built it and I just have that battery in there for the winch all standalone-like.  That way I'm not trying to charge that battery across the relatively small wires to the truck and I don't have to do anything to make sure that the breakaway system has power.

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