Yes




The alternator has two types of diodes. One is for current rectification the other is to shunt excess voltages to ground in the case of a load dump.

A winch can draw a lot more current than the alternator can supply. In the case of a long pull having the batteries in parallel doubles your capacity and maintains a higher voltage to the winch. It also reduces the level that the batteries are cycled to.

As far as sizing a capacitor I have not gone through the numbers. My experience is in designing much smaller circuits, but the theories are the same as are the failure modes. Typically the capacitor is not a very large value.

Large value capacitors in theory could do the job but have a high ESR so they are not effective as absorbing a fast changing transient voltage.

In my Raider there is nothing isolating the starter from the rest of the vehicle. I have never seen a vehicle that had a different setup.

I know theory but IÆm not an automotive EEà However I have worked on similar issues on industrial equipment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Load_dump