I just hooked up my winch's electrical the other day and used it the first time. I couldn't find anything to pull that didn't weight to much for the first time using it other than your average maybe 5' x 5' dumpster(empty) like I have in my apt. complex. I had the ex running and started to pull and then thought... maybe I should feed some RPM's to the battery to help charge it. When I got in the ex and hit the in button on the winch the battery guage( I think might be meessed up) dropped almost ontop of the L while being reved to about 2300 RPM is this normal? it is a smittybilt xrc8 and I have a fairly new optima red top the 34/78 i think. Does this sort of thing happen normally? I just had the alt. checked and have gone over the lectrical system which I had another thread about and the system checks out fine. Any thoughts?

Pretty normal. Winches draw crazy amps. No way that a stock alternator can keep up with that amperage draw. So for the most part, its running off the battery. A lot of people use dual batteries to help with the current demands.

a 8274 can draw up too 600A, even with a spanky 140A alt it would bottom out.

then maybe an upgrade from my 130A alt. to a HO one around 200A maybe would be a good first step in the right direction or the dual batteries first?

one vote for dual batteries first....

X2 with an isolator setup if in your budget.

I vote dual batteries. :skull:

dual batteries for sure