125A Breakers for Winches

[talise]

Hi All,

A few days ago I found that my Stb Electric Winch had stopped working.  I thought this was a repeat of the issue I had with the Port Winch which in the end turned out to be a faulty Contactor.

After some fiddling around, I found that the issue was one of the three 125A breaker switches in the Aft cabin.  I know this is the case as I can move the fault to one of the other winches by just re-allocating the wiring.

Question is :  Does anyone know a source for these extremely large value breakers.  They look like regular 10/20/50A breakers from the front but are much bigger from the back.  I've never seen these for sale anywhere.

If they aren't readily available, I might just wire all three to the same breaker on the basis that I'm never going to use two electric winches at the same moment.


Duncan 

[zaphod]

You need to get manufacturer information from the breaker, then you should be able to source a suitable replacement. If the breaker is part of a bank of breakers you may need to remove it to get the info because it is often printed on the side.

Putting multiple circuits on one breaker is not a good idea.

[MartyB]

You dont say where you are at, but here is a link to Blue seas breakers. i could not find 125a ones, but did find a list of 120amp breakers. You may have something similar......

Marty

www.bluesea.com/products/category/14/Circuit_Breakers?Amperage=120

[GrahamT]

I had the same problem on our SO49. The port primary winch would not run under load and the issue was high resistance through its breaker. Here the breaker is a German ETA 160 Amp "slow blow" breaker which are a) very expensive and b) not easily available (probably a custom build by the factory)

Like you I doubled up on the breaker for the starboard winch (will never use the two primaries at the same time) and have had no issues (4 and a half years now). Ultimately will need to solve the problem properly but it will be expensive.

[talise]

Thanks Graham.

Aha!  Not the gremlins just picking on me then :-)

If I track down a good replacment, I'll post here.

[talise]

Well, I've tracked down and ordered a replacement breaker.

d**n - it's expensive !   More than £100 and ironically had to order it shipped DHL from the USA.

If I have any more failures, I'll definitely replace this with a single high amperage Blue Sea equivalent, but this time round I didn't want to have to disfigure the panel to fit one.

If anyone needs the source, PM me.

Duncan

[jeremyr]

I posted on this a few years ago but the thread title reflected the OP's problem, namely his anchor windlass. That was also where my first failure occurred, but I later had one of the winch breakers fail identically.  I am guessing your breakers are the same, but I can't say for certain. If so...See:

jeanneau.proboards.com/post/26349/thread

I had trouble finding them locally so ordered them from Jeanneau. You should inspect all of them and make sure the studs don't rotate when you try to twist them with your fingers.  If they twist or wobble at all they will eventually fail.  When installing them you MUST use a pair of wrenches to ensure no torque is applied to the studs.