I am looking at a couple options for batteries on my Rancher 420. My atv is used 90% for snow plowing and I am having some trouble after plowing for a couple hours. After I have have been plowing and regularly using the plow/winch I cannot use the winch when the fan kicks on. When fan shuts off, all is well again until fan comes back on again.
My first though was to mount a stand alone deep cycle battery on the back rack and run the winch directly off that (connect to battery tender when done) but not sure how long it will run the winch without being connected to the alternator.
My other thought was to extend the atv battery cables and run everything off the single, larger deep cycle battery.

Will either of these options meet my needs?

 

Deep cycle batteries don't like heavy discharge rates for short periods, which is why they are not used on cars/motorcycles, etc, sounds like the winch would be a similar thing to using a starter motor, so I would use a normal battery, though possibly a car one. You could run the standard battery with another, wired in parallel, this would mean both would be charged from the alternator. If this causes problems due to both getting discharged at the same time, a caravan (trailer) "battery saver" can be used to stop the ATV battery discharging too much, but this adds to complexity, and I recon a standard car sized battery, along with the original, will work.

 

I know this an old post but found what I was looking for here so thank you. In short, I use my Rancher for 90% plowing as well. At this point I think I overwhelmed the stock battery's ability with "normal" accessories:
- Winch
- Light Bar
- Hand Warmers
- Power Steering (not an accessory but it uses the battery)
- Push Button Shifting (not an accessory but it uses the battery)

This past week here in New Hampshire we had a nor-easter snow storm and over the course of a day I plowed 3 times to stay ahead of the storm. By the end of the second plowing that day, my battery had barely anything left. When rising the plow (winch operated) the lights basically shut off and my hand warmers status light would dim out. Also since my Rancher has power steering, with the battery drained, the power steering was basically dead. I know the battery is good, I just need more capacity. So I am going to do what was mentioned above and that is to mount a normal car battery to the rear rack and have the winch pull from that. I am going to keep the car battery on its own circuit meaning I am not going to charge it via the ATV, I am going to buy another battery tender just for the car battery.

Thanks, Don