MarcusOReallyus: Thanks for your detailed response. That's exactly what I was looking for. I'll change out the relay and see how it does. For some reason this thing keeps smoking starters, but I don't have a lot of details from the previous owner. The one that's on there now is obviously new and there's another "new" looking one in the bed - obviously already fried.
Hmmm. Have you done
the Doghead Mod? Highly recommended. Actually, if you know what you are doing, you can use any good quality relay there. User
antennaclimber (also a ham, BTW) measured the current at 9 amps, so any good 20-30 amp relay will do. If you aren't sure enough to wing it, just follow Doghead's advice. It's solid.
I recommend you get yourself over to the
helpful threads sticky and read up on the starter circuit, if you haven't already.
I already have a 12v winch so I'll have to deal with that. How do people normally power high draw items like this? I mean, do you pick the front or rear battery? It seems like drawing down one batter and not the other could potentially cause problems.
Yes, it can. The rear battery gets the least use (starting only), so that would probably be the obvious choice, BUT, then you'd have to isolate the load from the chassis, which is not always easy to do, or to maintain. Safest is to use the front battery since it's grounded to the chassis.
Probably the best way to take care of the charging issue is with a
battery equalizer.
I've also seen some people using the digital 24v-12v converters for radios and such. It seems like this might be a good way to power a transceiver but I'm curious if anyone has experience with this.
Search on antennaclimber's posts. He's a big-time ham, and has done a lot of work in this area. Basically, just borrow the 12v from the front battery and keep it simple.
You'll find his posts very helpful. He knows his stuff.
If I'm still having issues after the relay swap my next stop will be a starter shop.
Be careful there, my friend. A lot of shops get confused by theses 24/12v systems, and give bad advice or do bad things because they don't know how it's supposed to work.
Another thing to check is the starter bracket. Some say the lack of that can cause problems as the starter isn't straight so it binds.
And with all of that free advice, one last thing - these girls are 30 years old. Wouldn't be a bad thing to just go through all the connections one by one, clean them, give 'em a dose of dielectric grease, and generally make sure things are in good shape.
