Heated throttle cable question?

[dzg]

When i installed my heated cable i grounded it to the big black ignition box instead of the key switch (couldnt get a ground through it for some reason)...will it hurt anything having it grounded to the box?

Also, how do i know for its working? I dont wanna be out in the middle of a lake ice fishing and end up with a stuck throttle

[msafi65]

Any good chassis ground should work fine. Test with switch on, engine running the cable housing gets warm to the touch in a short time. If no heat test power wire to ground with switch on

[dzg]

Ok, i wasnt sure if it would get that warm to the touch, my red light is on on my switch so i should have power to that anyways.

[thebuggyman1]

Big black ignition box??? The only black box that machine had was the winch relay, and that wasn't near the t-cable. I hope you are not on the voltage regulator.
That machine also did not have a B+ out of the key switch, did you change out the switch? Without changing the switch you could leave the heated t-cable on, run down your battery, or worse.....burn out the heating element.

[dzg]

No i didnt change the switch. I unplugged the fuse though till i had more time to spend with it to make sure i didnt catch **** on fire.

The black box im talking about has a battery cable coming in, one coming out, and is on the left side under the dash...

I didnt know the winch had a relay...

[thebuggyman1]

YUP, that's the winch relay. Using the ground there is ok as long as it is the ground. There will be a + and a - cable directly back to the battery, and the other 2 large wires go to the winch. When the winch is running in, the winch wires have one polarity, and when running out they flop polarity.

[dzg]

So as long as i have it hooked into the battery side of the relay im good?

[phabib]

If I wanted to be sure the cable was heating, I'd put a DC clamp ampmeter on it while running and make sure the load generated the number of Watts I was expecting. Without one of those, I'd just use a volt meter or test lamp from the input to the heater wire to chassis ground. I don't see any real harm if you're on the wrong end of the winch relay. It just means you won't get heat when the winch is running the "other" way. You won't be doing that long enough to matter.