ok so I have a few items that reguire lots of power for my duck boat, one being a winch, one being some lenco actuators for my flotation pods, and one for my TH Marine jack plate.
the jack plate had the factory relays and it went bad in a year, then that set went bad in the next year, so I wired in a TNT box from my 1988 evinrude 70 hp...has worked ever since...but it is ugly and has several wires not being used hanging out. I bought a new DPDT momentary switch for the lencos, and was thinking...my jack plate used the same switch...but it ran to a relays set up.... seem slike the DPDT switch would be enough....until my buddy told me the relays use small amperage to active the flow of HIGH amperage through the relay to run the high draw devices.

so my question is how many amps are the Winch, and the jackplate and the lenco actuators drawing???? if it is less than 20 amps, it seems my DPDT switch would be fine all by itself.

then it seems with the winch the term Solenoid is used or CONTACTOR, but for the hydraulic stuff they use the term RELAY, but they are doing the same function right?

Id like a source for waterproof relays or actuators that I can wire in myself.... that will handle my devices..

do I need to go and try and find out the amperage draw of those things??

my winch came with a solenoid , but it corroded in one year as well....( the TH Marine relays were encapsulated in epoxy and they still went bad!!)

hope to hear from someone....electricals isn't my strong suit..probably have enough knowledge to get in trouble


bob