Does the GM windlass draw power from both 32V engine battery banks?

[Blain]

Since the windlass is drawing power from at least one bank of engine batteries, I would like to install a shunt to key an eye on the voltage and amps drawn to avoid burning the newly reconditioning GM windlass motor. Although a 1000amp victory shunt monitor is overkill but the starter draw will have to go through the shunt as well, which is likely to be around 600amp to start the engines.
The Hatt manual does not specific which bank is connected to the windlass, so I am thinking both banks contribute to the windlass.

I would appreciate your input & comments.

Blain

 

[Pascal]

Both banks cannot be connected to the windlass or that would basically parallel the banks.

I don’t understand how you could burn out the motor. The only way that would happen would be if one the foot switches is corroded and turns it on. Happened to me once but I caught it in time. Now I turn off the windlass breaker on the relay box in the anchor locker

The motors have thermal safety switches anyway.

 

[SKYCHENEY]

It's one bank. Turn off your battery switches one at a time. You'll find out which one.

 

[cww]

At the risk of stating the obvious - the minute you connect anything to both banks, you don't have two banks anymore, you only have one. It defeats the point, and you will get stuck somewhere sooner than later unable to start the engines. You're overthinking this. The windlass already has an overload fuse located up forward in the chain locker, which will trip before you fry the motor. If you had to replace the last one, it probably bit the dust because of corrosion or some freak defect more than from any sustained overload. Just put it back like it was, the breaker would trip before that, and it lasted 40 years the first time. By the time anybody gets around to having to replace that again, it'll be your grandkids' kids. Why stress over it.

 

[Blain]

Thank you all for the comments, I understand the logic. In my previous vessel, the windlass was a 12V maxwell. I noticed that it struggled at times especially when I installed a heavier anchor, despite properly adjusting the clutch and such. Which made me nervous for sure. The anchor was well within the operational envelope of the windlass.
When I spoke with a Maswell engineer, he recommended checking the voltage at the anchor during its lifting. I added a Victron shunt at the batteries, so probably higher values than at the anchor, and I recorded a significant drop in voltage down to 10.8v and staying there.

The batteries were 3x 260AH fullrivers only 2 years old. The maxwell guy recommended increasing throttle a bit which helped push more amps into the batteries. I decided to go one step further and started the genset prior to using the anchor to charge the batteries and also increasing RPMs to 900. In this configuration, the shunt always showed a solid 13.4-14 volts.. so probably 12.8 to 13 v at the windlass.
In the 2 years since I started doing that, including a trip to Alaska where we commonly anchored in 70-90 feet deep, the windlass never struggled pulling all that chain, anchor and a ton of heavy sticky PNW mud.

I may not have to worry about the windlass with 32v batteries,, but it's useful to see if it needs a little extra to help the motor.

Blain